


We Never Had a Choice (But I Choose You)

by capsiclemycaptain, DrowningByDegrees



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, American Politics, Angst with a Happy Ending, Art, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Human rights activist Steve Rogers, Illustrated, Intrigue, Kidnapping, M/M, Mutual Pining, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Politician's son Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-21 07:17:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14910836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capsiclemycaptain/pseuds/capsiclemycaptain, https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningByDegrees/pseuds/DrowningByDegrees
Summary: When Bucky Barnes is abducted by political activists, the circumstances are simple enough. Desperation breeds all sorts of terrible decisions, after all, and Bucky's captor is clearly woefully out of his depth. Maybe, justmaybe, he can talk his way to freedom, but the more Bucky learns about the circumstances of his capture, the more complicated things seem to get. On the run and forced to trust the man who abducted him, Bucky comes to realize that kidnapping is the least of his worries.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am very excited to finally be posting my collaboration with the fantastic [capsiclemycaptain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/capsiclemycaptain/) for this year's Captain America Reverse Big Bang! Thank you for creating such inspiring artwork, capsiclemycaptain, and also for all the time you spent brainstorming ideas with me. This was a blast!
> 
> In regards to putting this fic together, Thank you so much to: 
> 
> [Jinlinli](http://archiveofourown.org/users/jinlinli/pseuds/jinlinli), for so many evenings of sprinting, helping me hash out plot ideas, and being a fantastic beta. <3
> 
> Thank you also to [KatLost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatLost/pseuds/KatLost) and [saffrn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saffrn/pseuds/saffrn) so much for your help with betaing!

Bucky hated hotel bars. They were beautiful if you could actually see them, only the lighting was usually so low you could barely appreciate the ornate marble countertops or the carefully carved out bar stools. If you didn’t watch yourself, you’d trip over the plush chairs huddled far too closely together around tables littered through the space. That was the bit that bothered him, the enforced intimacy of it all, like no one had told the decorator that hotel bars weren’t the kind of place where you met up with the kind of people you just wanted to pal around with. 

More importantly, hotel bar patrons didn’t tend to be his kind of people. Bucky watched suits and dresses come and go and bemoaned an evening wasted ‘staying out of trouble’ as his father had so politely put it. Hunching slightly over an otherwise empty bartop, Bucky cradled his whiskey in one hand and loosened his tie with the other. 

[](https://imgur.com/rbVD0SG)

The clink of ice cubes in his glass were loud enough that he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps. A low, silky voice rumbled above him, laced with amusement. “You look about like I feel.”

“Bored out of your skull?” Bucky cracked an eye open and looked up. Even in the hotel’s damnable near darkness, the guy was a looker, and blessedly, more casual than anyone else Bucky had seen. He wasn’t slouched, but he was relaxed, his tee-shirt pulling enticingly at his chest and shoulders.

“Yeah, something like that.” The guy smiled, and even in the low light, it was a contagious sort of thing, softened by his well-kept beard. It was a stark contrast from the smarmy, clean-cut politicians and businessmen Bucky had encountered over the course of the day. “Mind if I sit?”

Honestly, it wasn’t as if Bucky was ever going to say no. His mouth pulled into a teasing smirk anyway. “Oh, I don’t know… It’s pretty crowded.”

The guy laughed, rich and throaty, shivering right down Bucky’s spine. “How about I sweeten the deal and buy you a drink?”

“Yeah, I guess I could make room for you,” Bucky murmured, his gaze flicking over the man’s fitted shirt and broad shoulders. “I’ll take another whiskey.”

“Coming right up.” There was a jaunty little flick of the guy’s fingers along his temple like a haphazard salute, and then he was gone, sauntering off to the other end of the bar where the bartender was. Bucky watched a little longer than was probably polite, but who could possibly blame him? The night had just promised to get a lot more interesting. 

By the time the guy returned, Bucky had decided he had some semblance of manners and was occupying himself with a game on his phone. His company for the evening slid easily into the seat next to Bucky and held out a glass. “I’m Steve, by the way.”

“Steve,” Bucky repeated, tasting the name in his mouth. With any luck, it’d be getting a lot of usage at some point. “Nice to have a name to go along with… all the rest. I’m Bucky.”

“You’re not gonna tell me that’s some kind of euphemism, are you?” Steve teased, relaxing on the bar stool beside Bucky. “Because...well, points for creativity, but your execution could use a little work.”

Anyone else and Bucky would have probably bristled. The circles his family ran in meant he caught plenty of flack just for existing, without someone ragging on his name. Steve though… it was hard to be cross with anyone when they smiled the way he did, broad and just this side of wicked. 

“If you’re going to make fun of me all night, I might have to take that stool back,” Bucky threatened, not that there was any bite to it. All in all, this was a welcome change from how he’d expected to spend the evening. 

Steve’s teeth dragged along his bottom lip, and Bucky helplessly followed the motion. He was already thinking about how it might feel to lean in and close the distance between them, and Steve… Steve wasn’t helping. “Well, I’ll do my best to make it worth your while.”

\-----

“What do you say we get out of here? The penthouse suite has a _really_ nice view,” Bucky purred, his toes curling in his shoes in anticipation. He was fuzzy with maybe one too many drinks, and it was all he could do to remember why he probably shouldn’t crawl into Steve’s lap right here. 

“If you’re gonna be there, I’ll bet it does,” Steve bantered right back. He was unfairly steady on his feet, up in one smooth motion. Bucky’s nose crinkled, but he wasn’t about to complain when it meant Steve’s hands on him, playfully tugging him upright. Bucky didn’t know it was possible for Steve’s smile to be any more enticing, but there it was, wide and pleasant and just a few frustrating inches away. 

Then it was gone. More accurately, Steve had moved, reaching to scoop up their empty glasses. “What do you say, Bucky? One for the road?”

The thing about alcohol was that once Bucky had some, usually the best idea seemed like having more. He nodded without even thinking, absently considering the way his lips felt a little numb when his teeth scraped over them. It was pleasant in its familiarity, the window after where all the sharp edges of him fell away and before he was going to pay for it with a massive hangover. Probably.

Bucky lost track of the minutes after that, but soon enough, Steve was pressing a glass into his palm. “Bottoms up.”

“I’ll say,” Bucky retorted and then snorted out a laugh because he had _no_ idea what he meant. Before Steve could ask, Bucky was knocking back his drink, enjoying the dull burn of it down his throat. 

Steve was close again, enough that Bucky could feel the warmth that came with proximity like that. Impulsively, he leaned in when Steve’s fingers settled at the small of his back, all but melting where he stood. He tipped his chin up a little, lips parting in invitation. 

“Oh hey… hang on a minute,” Steve soothed, his thumb tracing lightly over the divot of Bucky’s spine. “You just looked like you were going to fall over.”

Had be been going to? Bucky mulled the question over briefly, but his expression twisted into a petulant, half hearted scowl at what felt like rejection no matter how drunk he was. Something sank in the pit of Bucky’s stomach, and where he’d normally brush it off, alcohol loosened his lips. He let Steve herd him towards the exit. “Is this the part where it turns out you’re ashamed to be seen in public with me?”

Steve’s brows rose in surprise. Bucky thought that was what was happening at least. Everything seemed a little bit fuzzy, like someone had taken sandpaper and scuffed up the entire world. Bucky rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, but it didn’t help. He did, however, hear Steve, calm and earnest as they headed for the elevator. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Then why don’t you… you…” Bucky trailed off, trying to remember what he’d been saying. The jump from tipsy to drunk was abrupt and very steep as that last drink kicked in, Bucky’s thoughts scattering and his limbs struggling to cooperate. It was entirely unfair because he’d never meant to stray beyond the fuzzy, happy feeling just on the far side of buzzed. His fingers found their way to Steve’s shirt, clinging for purchase, though it was hardly necessary. Steve was holding him up just fine. As abruptly as he’d lost his thought, it sprang back to the forefront of his mind, almost violent in its urgency. “Kiss me.”

The elevator dinged somewhere behind Bucky, and he let Steve shuffle him into it. His feet didn’t want to move, but somehow they managed. By the time they got into the lift, Bucky was propped up between the wall and Steve’s body. “See, if I started, I wouldn’t want to stop, and somehow I don’t think that’s something the general public would appreciate.”

Bucky smiled - or thought he did - mollified by the explanation. Steve was something else, gorgeous and funny and a gentleman to boot. With a frustrated sigh when his hands wouldn’t move with any of the deftness he wanted them to, Bucky pointed out, “We’re not in public now.”

“Just a little farther,” Steve promised, but Bucky couldn’t focus enough to catch his expression anymore. The floors chimed off as they passed, and Bucky sagged in Steve’s embrace. Even blinking was hard, his eyelids protesting each attempt to open them a little more than the one before.

When the elevator opened, it wasn’t to the penthouse. The door let out into shadows and concrete. That didn’t seem right, but as the darkness crushed in around him, he couldn’t push his mouth into the shape of words enough to ask why. 

\---------- 

Even limp and inches away from passing out, Bucky was fairly light in Steve's arms. He'd fallen for Steve's ruse so easily, and maybe that was the worst part of the whole thing. Steve had been fumbling through a plan he'd barely expected to work and Bucky had been either naive or lonely enough for it to work anyway. 

Steve knew enough about how the drug he'd used worked to be aware that it was intended to make Bucky suggestible and mostly incapacitated rather than knock him out. That didn't make the blank stare Bucky directed at nothing in particular any less disconcerting as Steve shuffled him out of the elevator. Bucky was rather like a large rag doll, perfectly still on his own, and going wherever Steve led him to. 

It wasn't right. It hadn't been in the bar upstairs and it wasn't now. A dozen feet from the SUV, Steve paused. It wasn't too late, after all. If he took Bucky up to the penthouse now and put him to bed, chances were the guy wouldn't even remember him in the morning. Chances were, Bucky would chalk the resulting migraine up to a bad hangover and the world would keep on the way it always had. 

Which was precisely the problem that had put them here in the first place. A lot of innocent people stood to lose on the immigration bill Senator Barnes had authored, and someone had to change that. They'd tried every acceptable route already to no avail, until all that was left was desperate measures in the shape of Steve standing in the middle of a hotel parking garage with a half-conscious Bucky Barnes in his arms. It wasn't a solution Steve liked, but it was the only one he had. 

"I'm sorry, pal," he murmured, dragging Bucky towards the vehicle. Getting him into the back seat was about like trying to adjust a hundred and fifty pound bag of potatoes. Bucky made a soft sound at being manhandled, but otherwise didn't respond as Steve laid him down. 

"Just go to sleep. You're going to be fine," Steve added, not that Bucky even seemed to hear him. Quietly as he could, Steve closed the door and pulled out his phone. He dialed a number and waited for them to pick up. "I've got the target."

\----------

Bucky's head throbbed like someone was in the act of parading his entire high school marching band through it. He'd very definitely had a few drinks too many, or at least he assumed as much-- sober nights didn't kick off mornings like this. The only thing worse than his headache was the sickening churn of his stomach, threatening Bucky's composure before he even got his eyes open. 

As far as penthouse suites went, even the bed was awful, leaving Bucky wondering what on earth he'd gotten up to the night before to leave him so sore. Gritting his teeth against the morning light he was expecting, Bucky cracked open one eye and then the other, and promptly felt like his breath had been kicked right out of him. 

That was... not the ceiling of a fancy hotel. It was all wood planks, as far as he could tell in the dim light, not even the stylized "rustic" sort of look Bucky might have expected, but rough and unfinished, like an old hunting cabin. 

"What the hell?" Bucky breathed out. His own voice seemed deafening in his ear. Asking the question didn't net him any answers, so he reached to scrub a hand over his face, the motion punctuated by an awful clinking sound. 

All at once, Bucky's sickly confusion was swept away in favor of dread. There was a metal cuff around his wrist that went... somewhere. 

“The fuck?” This had to be a joke or something. Bucky couldn’t remember anything past an evening spent chatting with a rather good looking stranger, and then… then… there was nothing. The rest of the night went blank. He reached for his bound wrist with his other hand, but that one was chained up too. There was some slack, but the chain (chain?!?!?!) was heavy and loud, the sound pulling a miserable whimper from Bucky. “What the _fuck_?”

For the space of a few seconds, Bucky couldn’t think past the terror. He had no sense for where he was or how he’d gotten there. The only thing more urgent than how lost Bucky felt was the violent heaving of his stomach. If he didn’t get turned over, he was very likely about to be choking on his own vomit. 

Instinct drove him more than intent, and despite the agonizing pounding at his temples, Bucky lurched to his side. Much to his relief, there was enough give in the chain to dangle his head over the side of the bed, clear of the old, faded quilt that had been draped over him. His hands fisted in the blankets as he retched, but all that came up was saliva and bile that clung to the inside of his mouth and dribbled on the floor. 

Bucky stayed like that for a little while, ill and in pain and half convinced he was dying. He wasn’t dead yet though, and the imperative to stay in the camp of the living got him moving when nothing else did. The room spun when Bucky pushed himself to sit upright, but he didn’t fall over. 

_Get it together, Bucky_. He said it over and over in his head, like some strange incantation that might get him out of this mess. Fighting through the pain and the lingering nausea, Bucky took stock of his situation. 

He was still in his clothes. Nearly all of them, though his shirt was hopelessly rumpled and his tie and shoes were neatly sitting in the far corner of the room. No kinky business, then, which was a shame, because it was the least horrifying explanation. 

The room itself would have been welcoming under other circumstances, in a charming, woodsy kind of way. The walls were uneven, like stacked up lincoln logs, hewn with more care than the ceiling, at least. The floor was wood paneling too, clean, but grey and faded with time. There was an unfinished wood dresser on the far side of the room beside his shoes and friendly floral curtains over the window. 

It could almost have been benign if not for the cuffs. He’d been tucked into bed with some measure of care. The mattress was terrible, but the pillows strewn atop it were soft and plush. Of course, that just made things more confusing. 

Bucky spotted the edges of boards nailed over most of the window, underneath the curtains. Maybe not so benevolent, then. Much as he was grateful they were keeping the sunlight out, they were also helping keep him in. Kinky business was sounding better and better the more he thought about it. 

Bucky was just eyeballing the shackles on his wrist when a knock at the closed bedroom door nearly startled him out of his skin. He looked for something - anything - he could use as a weapon, determined not to miss this chance to get away. There was nothing in easy reach, or any kind of reach for that matter, leaving Bucky praying it was someone turning up to rescue him. 

Swallowing thickly, he listened to the clinking of a key in the lock. The door creaked open a little and then all at once. “Are you awake? I thought you might want some breakfast.”

Bucky knew that voice, though he couldn’t quite place it. Regardless, it was an asinine question, and Bucky dismissed it, countering with a snarl. “What the _hell_ is this?”

His captor pushed the door the rest of the way open, balancing a tray. Bucky assumed the worst at first, but all he could see on it was a bowl of something and a plate and a glass of orange juice. Bucky’s gaze swept upward to the man’s face, warm eyes and shaggy hair that looked just as nice in the daylight as they had in the hotel bar. He hardly heard Steve speak, too gutted by the realization that he’d been toyed with. “This is just for a little while. I swear.”

“Damn right it is. When I get _out_ of these…” Bucky rattled the chains, just angry enough to brush off the awful ringing in his ears. 

“You’ll what? No one’s going to find you out here, and even if you got out, there’s nowhere to go.” Steve didn’t even have the decency to be unkind about it like a normal criminal. His expression was aggravatingly sympathetic and he sounded like he thought he was doing Bucky some kind of favor telling him. 

“I will get out of here, and when I do, you will _pay_ for this.” Bucky thought for a second about trying to lure Steve in and strangling him with the slack in the chain, but Steve was too big, and Bucky would be no closer to escaping anyway. 

“I know that,” Steve agreed, and that was even more confusing because he wasn’t picking and choosing what parts of Bucky’s yelling to agree with even. Steve’s eyes flicked to the wet, slimy puddle on the floor. He set the tray on the nightstand, which turned out to be laden to toast and what smelled like brown sugar in oatmeal. “But right now you’re here and I’m trying to help.”

“Help?” Bucky’s voice pitched upward, a hysterical edge to it. “If you wanted to help me, you’d let me go, you asshole.”

Bucky wasn’t sure if Steve faltered there, or if it was his own hangover-addled imagination. He thought for a second that he was making headway, but it was a fleeting hope, dashed by a minute shake of Steve’s head. “I can’t do that. This is bigger than you and me.”

“Bigger than… what? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Bucky demanded. 

There it was again, that little frown, like this was so _hard_ for him. Bucky wanted to sock him for it, and probably would have if not for the chains. “The less you know, probably the better.” 

“Excuse me? You have me chained to a fucking bed in the middle of god knows where and _you_ think it’s better I don’t know why?” Bucky ignored the agonizing throbbing in his skull as he screamed at Steve, finally reaching a point where any attempt to formulate a calm response fell entirely by the wayside. Whatever good sense had kept him from trying to strangle Steve before didn’t help him now, and before he knew it he’d wrapped his fingers around the orange juice glass and hurled it at his captor. 

Bucky had pretty good aim, all things considered. It didn’t quite reach Steve’s face where Bucky had been aiming. Instead, it smacked solidly against the guy’s chest, hard enough to pull a grimace from Steve. There was orange juice splattered everywhere even before the glass hit the floor, shattering across the wooden planks. 

Steve stared at the nebula of glass shards scattered around his feet for a moment, while Bucky looked on in triumph. That would just show him what his help was worth to Bucky. Only, then Steve looked up, and Bucky’s heart nearly stopped in his chest as reality set in. He’d just attacked someone who had him at their mercy. Steve had at least twenty pounds of muscle on Bucky, and even if he didn’t, Bucky was hungover and chained to a bed. If Steve wanted to hurt him, there wasn’t a thing Bucky could do. 

Steve didn’t hurt Bucky. He didn’t even complain about the mess. There was a brief, unhappy twist to his lips, but the soft set of his eyes made it seem less like anger and more like grief. Then he was gone, leaving Bucky staring at a closed door trying to make sense of any of it. 

When Bucky had finally satisfied himself that Steve wasn’t coming back, just then, he flopped back against the creaky old mattress. His stomach felt too sour to try to eat even the toast, so he curled up, hoping to sleep away some of the misery. Bucky’s mouth was sour and grimy, but there was nothing to wash away the feeling. As Bucky stared at the remains of the breakfast tray Steve had brought him, he wished vaguely that he’d thrown the oatmeal instead. 

\----------

So, they’d gotten off to a rocky start. That was… well, pretty understandable all things considered. It had been less than twenty four hours since Steve had taken Bucky and he was already sorry. Not that he blamed Bucky. What he’d done probably merited a lot worse than what he’d gotten. 

Steve barely got out of the room he was holding Bucky in before the front door of the cabin swung open. Instinctively, Steve tensed up at the intrusion, ready for a fight before he realized it was only Brock. It was better for everyone if Bucky didn’t know anyone else was involved, so he held up a hand to keep Brock quiet until he’d put on some music to cover their conversation. 

“What happened to you?” Brock asked, eyeballing the orange juice splashed across Steve’s shirt. 

“Hazard of the job, I guess.” Steve waved off the question. It was probably better that Brock didn’t know how the encounter stuck with him, stisting his belly in knots. “Turns out he’s about as much of a fan of being held captive as you’d expect.”

“Maybe you should restrain him better.” There was such a casual air to how Brock said it, as if Bucky had somehow brought this whole business on himself, but that wasn’t quite new. From what Steve knew, Brock was no stranger to desperate measures, and it probably helped if you could convince yourself that only guilty paid for it. 

It was far, far too late to voice any misgivings, so Steve sidestepped the tension that thrummed down his spine. “Just tell me you have something.”

“Define ‘have something’? We delivered the ultimatum. Now, we wait to see what Senator Barnes does with it.” Brock’s shoulders rose and fell like they were talking about some office job deadline instead of a human being’s freedom. 

Steve gritted his teeth on the urge to call Brock out. “You said it’d only be a day or two. Are we on schedule at least?”

“Steve. _Relax_.” Brock clapped him on the shoulder and squeezed, smiling in what Steve suspected was meant to be a reassuring manner. It wasn’t reassuring. “I know this is your first op like this, but it’s going to be _fine_. Before you know it, the senator will pull the legislation and your houseguest will go home. Simple as that.”

“Bucky doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know anything.” Steve reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “We should-”

Steve was stopped by Brock’s fingers digging into his shoulder. It didn’t hurt, less an attack than a warning. “We should _keep_ it that way. Stick to the plan and when it’s over, everyone goes home.”

Willing himself to relax, Steve forced his shoulders to drop a little, until Brock finally let him go. “I hope that’s true.”

“Lighten up, Rogers.” There was that smile again, sharp edged for all its friendliness. “Think of all the good we’re doing here. All the good _you’re doing_. A lot of lives are going to be saved by inconveniencing our friend here a little, and a couple of days ago, you thought that was worth it. Is it still?”

It was the logic that Brock had convinced Steve with in the first place, and nothing had really changed about that. There was something blessedly simple in writing off someone who was just a name on a paper though. Now, Bucky was real and just on the other side of a door. He’d been a limp, helpless weight in Steve’s arms. He’d been all spite and anger, rightfully so. None of Steve’s good intentions quelled the ill feeling that came with what he’d done, but Steve couldn’t give his guilt any real estate in a conversation like this. “Of course it is.”

“Then, that's all that matters. The world can be better. It has to be better,” Brock insisted. “But it's not going to get there alone. Sometimes you've gotta give it a push.”

It was difficult to argue with that logic after what they’d already done. That didn’t mean the decision sat well with Steve. Swallowing down the urge to protest, Steve nodded vaguely and pretended not to be ruminating on what was beginning to feel like a grave error of judgment.


	2. Chapter 2

Their interactions had been largely silent over the last couple of days, so Bucky was genuinely startled when Steve stuck around after bringing Bucky lunch, hovering at the foot of the bed. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

It was such a preposterous question in the face of the last couple of days, Bucky helplessly rasped out a laugh. “Now you care about my permission?”

Steve’s mouth slanted off at an angle, but he didn’t move. Bucky let him stand there in silence for a few minutes while he inspected his sandwich and gulped down half the glass of water Steve had brought. It was the only shred of power he had shackled up in this room and he made the most of it.

More for his own sake than for Steve’s Bucky eventually gestured at the foot of the bed. “Fine. This had better be good.”

“I just…” Steve paused like his mouth was full of glue, jaw working while he settled at the far end of the bed. When he finished, it was quieter than before. “I’m sorry.”

Any amusement Bucky had found in the situation drained away, flushed out by a hot flash of anger. “Fuck. You. You get to apologize when you bump into someone's cart at the grocery store. You don't get to apologize for this."

"I don't-" Steve's lips pursed, and he reached to scratch the back of his head. "You at least deserve an apology for all this."

"I deserve a hell of a lot more than an apology, you asshole," Bucky fumed. He'd been stuck here long enough to know Steve wasn't trying to poison him, so he made his captor wait while he chewed through a bite of his sandwich. "This isn't about what I deserve though, is it?"

Steve's eyebrows shot up like they meant to make an escape. "What else would it be about?"

"Oh, knock it off. No one is _that_ stupid. This is just about you and your feelings, like what you did is less awful because you're sad about it." Bucky glared at Steve over the rim of his glass as he brought it to his lips, taking some small pleasure in the way the guy visibly deflated. For just a second, Bucky thought he'd won.

Only, then Steve opened his mouth. "No. It's not like that at all. Nothing I say makes this less of a terrible thing to have done."

"Glad to hear we agree on something." Bucky leaned back against the rickety headboard of his bed, making a concerted effort to clink his shackles as loudly as possible as he set his glass aside. He refused to let Steve forget for a second what his responsibility was in all this. "So, why bother?"

Steve's mouth opened and closed a couple of times, while Bucky watched him fumble his way towards some kind of explanation. At least it was more engaging than staring at the walls. "I can't take back any of it, and you deserve _some_ kind of..."

"Some kind of what?" Bucky pressed when Steve trailed off. "Explanation? You're not giving me one. What did you think you were going to accomplish? That I'd be happier chained up in here if I knew you felt bad about it?"

Bucky half expected Steve to leave when the pressure got to be too much, but he didn't go. He was stiff all over, like it was a physical effort not to flee, but he didn't go. "No. Of course not."

"Then fuck off. If you're not going to let me go or give me a damned good reason why I'm here, we don't have anything to talk about." Bucky held up his wrists, and the metal cuffs sagged down his forearms, revealing where they'd begun to chafe his skin. Steve's dismayed expression when he saw the results didn't bring Bucky nearly as much satisfaction as he'd have hoped.

The silence between them was a suffocating sort of thing. Steve stayed, and eventually Bucky got tired of displaying the bindings he’d been saddled with. He let his hands fall into his lap with a series of dull clinks as the chain settled, glowering at the unwelcome company. 

“There _is_ a reason,” Steve insisted, a quiet, pleading edge to his voice. Bucky watched Steve’s face screw up in concentration, or maybe some kind of hesitation. “Are you familiar with H.R. 797?”

“With what?” Bucky was reasonably certain he hadn’t heard that combination of letters and numbers anywhere. 

“It’s an asylum reform bill. If it passes, it could eliminate the ability of anyone on this side of the _world_ to get help when they need it. People will die if it gets traction.” The words came more quickly as Steve explained, emphatic and strained with emotion. “Your father is that bill’s author.”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed as he considered what Steve was telling him. “And you thought kidnapping was the way to go?”

“Of _course_ not,” Steve protested. He must have seen the incredulous look Bucky gave him though, because his jaw clicked shut after that. “We tried every legal channel.”

“I take back what I said. You might actually be an idiot,” Bucky muttered, shaking his head. “Did you think _any_ of this through?” 

A frown pulled at Steve’s mouth. “I wouldn’t have started this if I hadn’t. We take you and then offer you back in exchange for him pulling the bill. No money or anything. Just… Just the lives he’s threatening with that monstrosity.”

Bucky barked out a rueful laugh. “A guy cobbles together what sounds like it must be an insanely cruel proposition with no regard for human life, and you think a kidnapping is gonna change his mind? You’ve clearly never met my father.”

Steve reached a hand up, scrubbing his palm over his face. “It’s different. You’re family.”

“Yeah, technically speaking, but … I’m not exactly ‘party of family values’ compliant. I’m a liability, Steve.” Bucky almost pitied Steve his naivete, so clearly on display. “You don’t have leverage. You’re doing him a _favor_.”

“I'm _not_ doing him any favors.” Steve scowled at the insinuation. “He’ll have to cave eventually. If not out of basic decency than out of political pressure. When he does, you go home and that’s the end of it.”

For a second, Bucky couldn’t do more than stare. Steve was something else, criminal in his optimism. “You actually believe that, don't you?” 

Steve turned his head away a bit, and the overhead light cast shadows that made it hard to figure out what his expression was doing. “Of course I believe that. I wouldn’t have dragged you into this if I didn’t believe it was going to work.”

Bucky’s stomach lurched at the admission. This had been so much less complicated when he hadn’t known the details, and in retrospect, maybe that was why Steve hadn’t told him. “I have some bad news for you. That’s not what’s going to happen.”

“You an expert in politically motivated kidnapping?” Steve’s tone was just a touch too warm to be serious, exactly the sort of friendliness that had drawn Bucky in at the bar. Now, it just made Bucky bristle with the physical discomfort of it, like cold water down his spine. 

“No, but unlike someone in this room, I know what you’re up against,” Bucky snipped back. “Let me guess. He hasn’t even answered you, right?”

“Not that I know of,” Steve admitted. They both realized his mistake at the same time, and Bucky watched with interest as he froze at the far end of the bed. Bucky had guessed Steve probably wasn’t in this alone, but now he was certain of it. 

For the moment, Bucky let that slide. “Yeah, I figured not. He’s not going to do anything until you escalate, threaten to go go public with it or something, and when you _do_ , he’s just going to use it to his benefit. He’ll probably give you some bullshit about how the political convictions of this great nation are not for sale or something. His constituents will lap that right up and it won’t matter. Hell, you probably just won him his next election.”

Steve’s lips pursed in thought, and for a second, Bucky thought maybe he was actually getting through. Any hope of that died when Steve opened his mouth. “Are you always this cynical?”

Bucky let his head thump against the headboard and noisily covered his face with his palms. Not that it was comfortable with the way the shackles pulled at his wrists. “Are you always this stupid?”

“It’s going to work. You’ll be out of here in no time,” Steve promised. As abruptly as he’d turned up, Steve pushed himself to stand. Gesturing vaguely towards Bucky’s cuffs, he added, “In the meantime, that looks like it hurts.”

“You try living your life in handcuffs for this long and see how you like it,” Bucky grumbled. He’d have crossed his arms, but, while the chains had enough give, the discomfort wasn’t really worth the point Bucky was making. 

“I’ve probably got something for that,” Steve said over his shoulder as he slipped out of the room. 

“What? Like a key?” Bucky called out towards the open door. It was entirely the wrong angle for him to see anything beyond the room he was trapped in, but he could hear the distant shuffling of something in another room. 

A few moments later, Steve was back with gauze, tape, and a tube of something Bucky couldn’t read from where he was sitting. He heaved a put upon sigh as Steve came to sit down again. “You know, you could help me a lot more effectively by letting me _go_.”

There was a space of a few seconds where Steve seemed like he was considering it. He looked at the wall, the bedding, anywhere but Bucky before quietly holding out his hand for one of the cuffs. Despite everything, he was careful, cradling Bucky’s knuckles in his palm like they were made of glass. “I’m sorry. We both know I can’t do that.”

“Not sorry enough,” Bucky muttered. He watched Steve turn the key in the lock, opening the shackle and easing it away from his wrist. 

Bucky watched Steve squeeze a bit of it onto his fingers, like he meant to patch up the damage himself. Something in Bucky recoiled at the idea of allowing any kind of kindness from Steve, and he yanked his wrist out of reach. "I can do it myself."

"Right. Of course." Steve shook his head minutely and handed over the tube without any sort of protest. Wordlessly, he tore a length of gauze off the roll and offered that up as well. 

There was something to focus on, at least, to distract Bucky from the weight of having an audience. From anyone else, he’d have assumed the attempt at kindness was a manipulation, but Steve, quite frankly, didn’t seem complicated enough for that. Somehow, that, the idea that it was _genuine_ was worse. Hadn’t anyone told him that you didn’t get to kidnap someone _and_ be their friend? Bucky channeled his frustration into rubbing the salve into his newly freed wrist and snatched the gauze out of Steve’s hand maybe a little more emphatically than necessary. 

It was a ritual they went through in silence. Bucky wound the gauze around his wrist and taped it in place, and Steve shut the shackle back in place before unlocking the other one. Under other circumstances, Bucky might have taken his time just to revel in whatever momentary freedom he got. He was eager to put some space between them though, so he briskly patched up his other wrist, and with nothing left to talk about and nothing more to do, Steve didn’t have any reason to linger. 

“Do you need anything else?” Steve asked as he gathered up the supplies he’d brought.

“Nothing you’re going to give me,” Bucky replied sourly. Steve had the audacity to look hurt by the accusation, but Bucky ignored it. 

Long after Steve left, Bucky stared at the door, trying to work out a plan. Maybe he wasn’t in danger now, but he would be when things went sideways, and Bucky had no intention of sticking around to find out how far they’d go. 

\----------

Steve read the last paragraph of Representative Barnes’ response for what must have been the fifteenth time, but not a word of it had changed. 

_As an elected representative, I have a sacred duty to uphold the will of the people I represent. I will not be bought and I will not be bullied into straying from that responsibility._

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered, scrubbing a hand over his face. Bucky’s “some bullshit about political convictions” warning echoed at the back of his mind, but that wasn’t the problem. He didn’t care that Bucky was right. He cared that he’d banked on this and he was _wrong_.

“Relax, Steve. So, the guy’s a tough nut to crack.” Brock sat in the ratty, old recliner at the other end of the living room, his booted feet crossed on the footrest. “Given the kind of legislation he put out into the world, you can’t really be that surprised.”

“Aren’t you? You’re the one who said this would be over in a couple of days.” Steve glanced towards the bedroom door where Bucky was locked up and lowered his voice a little. “Maybe we should let him go.”

“We are _not_ just letting him go,” Brock snarled, as emphatically as if Steve had just suggested they switch sides and back the bill. It was passionate more than dangerous, and Steve couldn’t pinpoint anything about it that would account for the unease he felt. “There are too many lives at stake to back down now.”

“So we find another way. If he doesn’t care that we have his son now, I don’t think keeping Bucky longer is going to change that. Steve wrung his hands in his lap. He’d bet everything, his own convictions even, on this working. All he had to show for it was an unfathomable brush off. 

“Maybe _Bucky_ can be convinced to tell us what he _does_ care about.” Brock said Bucky’s name like a threat, and there it was again, a heavy cold in the pit of Steve’s stomach. 

“He’s got nothing to do with any of this. He doesn’t get hurt.” Steve rarely put his foot down about the methods anyone in their group used, but there was a line. There had to be, or they were no better than the monsters they were out to stop. It wasn’t a question, and Steve refused to flinch away from Brock’s scrutinizing gaze. 

“You’re sweet on him.” Brock sighed through his nose. “I knew we should have roped someone else into this.”

“Like who? There was no one else.” Steve refused to give Brock’s accusation a moment’s consideration before he countered. “I have _principles_. The minute we start hurting people, we lose every leg we have to stand on. I won’t be part of that.”

Suddenly, Brock’s expression broke into a brilliant, sharp smile. It was deceptively friendly, at odds with the tension in his arms and shoulders, like he was ready for a fight and his face was trying to de-escalate. “You’re really something, Rogers. You know that? But you can calm down. No one said anything about hurting your pal.”

“He’s not my-” Steve stopped and shook his head. Better to let the matter drop. “Okay.”

Steve willed himself to take Brock’s advice and calm down. There was no immediate threat, and Brock seemed confident that they’d win out in the end. Given his track record, the smart thing would be to trust him. 

“Who knows? Maybe telling him his family doesn’t want him back will be enough to get him to help all by itself,” Brock mused, unwinding by fractions as he leaned back in the recliner. 

It wasn’t going to be a surprise to Bucky, and that was the really terrible part, all things considered. Steve hated the idea of having to confirm Bucky’s painfully bleak outlook was accurate. He didn’t say a word to Brock on the matter, for reasons he couldn’t quite define. “I’m not asking him to be party to this while we’re holding him captive.”

“What? You think he’s going to help us if we let him go? The minute you free him, he’s going to be in the wind.” Brock shook his head like Steve had just suggested the worst thing he’d ever heard. “Worse, he’s seen your _face_. You let him go and I give it a week before he’s got you behind bars.”

“I knew what I was risking when I brought him here,” Steve insisted. He stood up, the tablet still in his hand, his shoulders squared as he looked Brock across the room. “I’m not going to coerce him into helping.”

Brock’s jaw worked like he was chewing on a response, glowering across the room. The tension was so thick, Steve could scarcely breathe, and for a second, he wondered if he should be afraid. Then, all at once, it seemed to dissolve. Brock sat up so quickly that the recliner squealed out a protest. He got to his feet, shoulders rising and falling briefly. “Suit yourself. I’ll figure something out and be in touch.”

It was a victory, or should have been, but somehow Brock’s concession didn’t feel like one at all. Steve nodded anyway. “I’ll be here.”

“Have fun babysitting.” Brock headed for the door, pausing at the threshold with his hand on the handle. “Oh, and Steve?”

“Yeah?”

Brock looked over his shoulder at Steve. “If we’re too late? If people get hurt and we could have stopped it? That’s on you.”

\----------

Bucky knew the moment Steve came through the door that the news wasn’t good. There was a tense little furrow between Steve’s brows. He smiled at Bucky, but it was only a thin veneer for something else. “How are you holding up?”

“You keep asking that like it’s going to change,” Bucky replied dryly. He rattled the chains at Steve for good measure. “Let me guess. It didn’t work.”

Wordlessly, Steve handed over a small tablet. There was no wifi signal, no way Bucky could surreptitiously get out a call for help, but there was a message pulled up. It was pretty much what he had expected, but his chest still felt like it had rocks in it, having to see the choice his father had made. “See? I told you it was going to go like that.”

“Doesn’t it _bother_ you?” Steve gritted out, his jaw clenched. It took Bucky a moment to work out that Steve was angry in his defense. That was… it might have been kind of touching if not for their circumstances. 

“What? To have written confirmation of what I already knew?” Bucky had had every intention of putting a brave face on it. Steve had no business being privy to anything about him. They weren’t friends. They weren’t anything. All Bucky’s intentions amounted to swallowing thickly and staring at the ceiling, waiting for the sorrow that threatened to pass. His voice snuck out in a thready whisper. “Of course it bothers me, but so what?”

“I’m so sorry. If I’d had any idea I would have…” Steve started. Bucky didn’t realize Steve had gotten closer until he felt a hand on his arm. 

“You what? You would have kidnapped someone who mattered?” Bucky shook off Steve’s hand. There was no comfort that eased a revelation like this, least of all from someone holding him captive. 

Steve pulled his hand away, but he stayed put, and Bucky quite honestly didn’t have the emotional fortitude to run him off just then. Sitting with his knees tucked against his chest, Bucky bowed his head until he trusted himself to be calm enough to ask, “What now?”

“We’re working on it. If you leave now, all of this was for nothing.” Oddly enough, Steve looked every bit as unhappy about that as Bucky felt.

“Keeping me here doesn’t accomplish anything either.” Gingerly, Bucky picked up the tablet to hand it back over, but Steve waved him off. 

“It’s bad enough that I can’t just let you go. You’re probably bored out of your mind.” Steve winced as he said it, looking so guilt ridden that Bucky couldn’t help wondering how he’d ended up the perpetrator of a kidnapping in the first place. 

“You’re just now realizing that?” he asked, because it was the safer question, all things considered. 

Steve opened his mouth, expression serious, and for a second Bucky thought he was going to get some kind of aggravating excuse. Only, then Steve smiled, just a little. “I was kind of afraid it was going to end up being thrown at me.”

“I could still throw it at you,” Bucky replied a touch petulantly. Eager to forget about his father for a while, Bucky swiped the message away and set about investigating what was on the device. “So what’s different?”

“This whole _mess_.” Steve raked his hand through his hair in frustration. “It was never exactly fair, but this is just…”

Bucky paused, his fingers resting against the tablet. He turned his head to look at Steve properly, watching him work through… whatever he was thinking about. “Then, let me go.”

“I _can’t_.” Steve’s voice cracked on the words. Horror dawned on Bucky as he realized Steve actually _believed_ that. “Whatever happens to me, that’s… that’s fine, but this is bigger than you and me. People will die if that bill passes. I can’t let that happen.”

“Why is it on you? Have you ever existed in the world? Shitty things happen all the time. People _die_ all the time, and as far as I know, you’re not kidnapping anyone over any of the other awful things going on,” Bucky pressed. “So why is this one on you?”

The look Steve gave Bucky was briefly so miserable that it might as well have been him chained up in a bedroom. His jaw tightened stubbornly though, after a moment. “Someone has to take responsibility. If these things happen and no one stands up, they’ll never stop.”

It would have been admirable if Steve’s idea of standing up hadn’t been kidnapping, but there wasn’t much point in arguing at the moment. As best as Bucky could tell, Steve wasn’t the one pulling the strings, and he latched onto that fact. If he couldn’t get free, maybe he could at least get information that would help him later. Deciding Steve probably wouldn’t answer more direct questions, Bucky took a roundabout approach. “Why didn’t you just… I don’t know, _ask_ for my help?”

“Ask... “ Steve started, trailing off like he didn’t quite know how to finish. 

“I’ve never agreed with him on anything in my life. Is it really that far fetched an idea?” Bucky shrugged, as if it were just an off-handed comment. 

“We couldn’t risk you saying no, and then being aware of us.” Steve’s expression scrunched in thought, and Bucky watched the minute shift as he turned over what Bucky had said. “Would you have helped us?”

There was no good answer, and maybe the truth didn’t matter anymore. Bucky could obstinately condemn himself or he could made Steve feel worse, and surprisingly enough, he didn’t really feel like doing either. “I guess we’ll never know.”


	3. Chapter 3

Bucky had gotten to Steve, he was pretty sure. Oh sure, Steve didn’t say as much, but he’d seen the look on the guy’s face. Though Steve probably thought he was hiding it, guilt festered, plain as day. If he could just figure out what buttons to press, Bucky was relatively certain he could convince Steve to eventually let him go. 

He collected tidbits of information. It was a few more days before Bucky came to the conclusion that he was asking the wrong questions. Except for one useless attempt, Bucky had asked plenty about the mission itself (and come up empty), but not at all about Steve. 

Steve wasn’t exactly scarce, so Bucky waited for him to turn up with a tray of sandwiches and coffee. He looked tired, and some small, bitter part of Bucky hoped it was distress over what he was doing. Bucky bit down on the urge to make any accusations though, and asked casually, “We’ve been out here for… I don’t even know how long. Do you not miss civilization at _all_?”

Steve’s eyes narrowed, though his exhaustion muted the suspicion in his gaze. Whatever Steve thought Bucky was after, he shrugged it off. “I knew what I was signing up for.”

“I didn’t,” Bucky retorted, bitterness briefly lacing his tone. Steve winced visibly, and Bucky latched onto that. Mad as he was at Steve, Bucky had long since figured out that the guy wasn’t evil or stupid. Just desperate, though Bucky didn’t know what about. He was chipping at Steve’s resolve though, and this was as good an opening as any to try again.

Steve didn’t leave, so Bucky let the silence draw out for a few seconds before he asked, “How did you end up in the middle of all this, anyway?”

The response Bucky got for his efforts was instantaneous. Steve glanced up at Bucky, shoulders going tense as he dragged his palm along his beard. “You already know what I did this for. Why I got into it hardly matters.”

It mattered a lot, then. Bucky had learned a thing or two about people, growing up in politics. He changed expressions like normal people changed shirts, all feigned interest and an almost smile. “I don’t know. We’re stuck here together. I don’t know a thing about you, but I’d like to.”

“Why?” Steve’s brows dipped suspiciously. “Before you know it, you’ll be out of here and I’ll be…”

“In jail?” Bucky pressed, watching every minute shift in Steve’s body language. “See, that’s a really _weird_ thing to resign yourself to.”

Steve shrugged, but it was a forced sort of thing. “Like I said. I knew what I was signing up for.”

“What are you so afraid of? That you’ll tell me and I’ll hate you more?” That didn’t seem right. It didn’t fit with what Bucky knew about Steve as a person. He cocked his head to the side, watching his captor, genuinely trying to work it out. “... or that I’ll hate you less?”

Steve froze, his lips pressed in a thin line. There was nothing Bucky could do to stop Steve from leaving, and for a second he looked like he was going to, but the second passed and Steve was still there. Glancing down at the empty space at the foot of the bed, Steve asked, “Mind if I sit?”

The last time Steve had asked him, Bucky’s answer had gotten him into this whole mess. Yes had come so easily in the bar, staring up at a pretty face, but now… Now, Bucky’s thoughts were cluttered and contradictory. It was a particularly confounding question now, in a place where Bucky had no real agency, though he knew Steve meant it. If he said no, Steve would stand there because he didn’t want to be doing this to Bucky anymore than Bucky wanted him to. For the sake of not having to crane his head up, or maybe, maybe because he felt a teensy bit sorry for Steve, he gestured vaguely at the bedding. “Yeah, go ahead.”

Steve sat heavily, the mattress dipping under the weight of him. He didn’t speak at first, but Bucky waited until he finally answered. “My mother was a nurse with one of those Doctors Without Borders sorts of groups.”

Was. Bucky paused over that word. Steve didn’t look much older than him. The sympathy in Bucky’s tone was entirely genuine when he asked, “What happened to her?”

“Our government happened to her,” Steve gritted out. He’d clasped his hands together, and Bucky could just make out where they were going a little bit white under the tight squeeze of his fingers. “Not regional violence. Not the refugees she was helping. A U.S. airstrike blew up the hospital she was working out of. Nineteen innocent people died, and they had the _audacity_ to call it collateral damage.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky breathed out, his own bitterness over the situation hitting a wall. It clicked into place, why this was so important to Steve, worthing giving up someone else’s freedom and his own over. “Really.”

Steve frowned and waved off the apology. “She did what she believed in and I grew up wanting to be just like her. I was never going to be a nurse or a doctor, but I thought maybe I could protect the people she set out to save.”

Bucky hesitated, fidgeting where he sat at the other end of the bed. He had an opening, but it felt like a cheap one to take. Opening his mouth, Bucky looked at the ceiling, so he wouldn’t have to see Steve’s expression. “You think she’d be proud of you?”

There was a choked out breath off at the foot of the bed, and then a troubled whisper. “She’d be _horrified_.”

“Then do something _else_. This was always a bad plan. Even if it _had_ panned out it would have been over as soon as someone got wind of the bill being pulled on account of blackmail.” Bucky did risk looking at Steve then. It should have been satisfying spotting the distressed strain at the corner of Steve’s eyes, but Bucky took remarkably little pleasure in it. “This didn’t work, but it doesn’t mean something else won’t. It doesn’t sound like this was who you set out to be.”

“I know what you’re doing.” Steve sat up a little straighter, his gaze steady as he watched Bucky. Bucky swallowed thickly and resisted the urge to curse at his failure as the silence stretched out far too long between them. He also resisted the urge to voice his shock when Steve deflated, huffing out an exhausted breath as he added. “But you’re right.”

“I…” Bucky’s nose crinkled in confusion. He’d only been sowing seeds, assuming Steve wasn’t nearly so close to breaking.He hadn’t actually expected it to _work_. It was harder to hate Steve knowing he had probably only led the guy to a conclusion he’d nearly reached himself. Thinking quickly, Bucky recovered with a tight smile. “Of course I’m right. So, what now?”

“Now, I should probably get those cuffs off of you, and then I take you home.” Steve rubbed at the back of his neck, discomfort lacing his features. “Or wherever it is you want to go.”

It was the best news Bucky had heard in weeks, and he was already on his feet before he thought of something. “What about the other guy?”

Steve made a face that Bucky quicky pegged as him deciding whether or not to lie, and cut him off before he could. “The door isn’t soundproof. Besides, someone has to be giving you updates.”

“Don’t worry about him. I’ll sort it out. Let’s just get you out of here, okay?” Steve held out an upturned hand, fishing out the key to the cuffs with his other. There was something ritualistic feeling and oddly intimate about offering up his cuffed wrist, but Bucky wanted to be free more than he wanted to dwell on the emotion of getting there. 

Steve took Bucky’s wrist without hesitation, and briskly turned the key. The heavy cuff fell open, and when Steve let go, it thumped down onto the blankets. Just like that, with hardly any significance at all, Bucky was halfway free. 

The second followed much like the first. Steve moved in gentle, but brisk motions, unlocking the second cuff. It gave without protest and then was gone, a fact that Bucky was still trying to wrap his head around when Steve reached for the bandages on one of his wrists. 

Bucky’s most basic instinct was to jerk away. Steve wasn’t a friend or a lover. He was… Bucky didn’t really know what he was anymore. Bucky didn’t immediately decide how to respond though and Steve very carefully didn’t quite touch. “May I?”

There was some part of Bucky that almost said no purely out of spite. It wasn’t that he had a strong opinion so much as it was an opportunity to say no. Steve had never once really hurt him though, and Bucky didn’t honestly think he was going to start now. Pursing his lips, Bucky gave in with a terse nod of his head. 

Steve nimbly unwrapped the gauze from one of Bucky’s wrists, so much so that Bucky barely felt the pressure of his fingers. With each unwrapped bit, he revealed more of Bucky’s wrist and forearm, no longer raw and angry where the cuff rested. Steve’s mouth flicked up in a tentative, relieved smile. “I just wanted to know that it healed up alright.”

“As you can see, I’m fine,” Bucky murmured, pulling his arm back out of Steve’s grasp. When he started to unravel the gauze from his other wrist himself, Steve didn’t protest, but he stayed put. They were so distracted with the strange, off-kilter moment, neither one of them heard the front door. 

\----------

While Bucky put on his shoes, Steve picked up the tray he’d brought in to take in to the kitchen. Bucky was probably sick to death of sandwiches, and they could always pick up food on the road. As caught up as he was in plans to get Bucky home, Steve nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Brock closing the front door. 

He meant to deal with the complications after Bucky was home safe and not a second sooner. It meant playing along for the time being, so Steve flashed Brock a smile as he walked in the door. He spoke loudly because he didn’t dare turn back to warn Bucky to stay put. “I wasn’t expecting you for at least a couple more days. Is this good news or bad?”

Brock hummed back a noncommittal greeting, and Steve guessed he must have just come back from a mission of some sort. He was still in tactical gear, a bulky black vest strapped over an equally bulky black jacket, a belt of weaponry strapped around his waist. Brock smiled, but it was sharp at the corners, more threat than greeting. “That’s all a matter of perspective. Your house guest will be thrilled. It’s time for him to go home.”

Steve’s eyebrows shot up at the insinuation. Something was off, but Steve couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. Maybe it was just how underdressed he felt unarmed and in socks. “The senator caved?”

“We accomplished what we set out to do,” came Brock’s cagey reply. “Now to tie up the loose ends.”

“Loose…” it was as far as Steve got before Brock reached to unholster his handgun and everything slid neatly into place. 

“No hard feelings, of course.” Brock’s lips curled up in a sneer, and Steve did the only thing he could think to. Letting the tray crash to the floor, he closed the distance between them in a few short bounds and tackled Brock against the door. There was a deafening noise near Steve’s ear as Brock pulled the trigger, but the shot meant for him went wide, shattering the glass that covered a piece of artwork over the couch. 

Whatever upper hand Steve had, it didn’t last. He pinned Brock against the door for a second, before his grip was shaken by knuckles to his kidney. Steve staggered back and Brock followed, forcing him on the defense even as he gave up ground. 

Back and forth they went, a flurry of fist and feet and snarled words. Steve swatted the gun out of Brock’s grip and it clattered to the floor near the couch. He paid for it with a punch just beneath his ribs at an angle that nearly made Steve double over. 

The follow-up Steve expected never came. Instead, it was interrupted by the loud creak of a floor board on the other side of the room. Brock and Steve both turned in time to see Bucky wincing at having been caught, the lamp from his bedroom held up like a baseball bat. 

Steve had no illusions about what was happening. He was Bucky’s best chance to go home, so it was in Bucky’s best interest that Steve didn’t die here. Whatever Bucky’s motives - and however much Steve admired Bucky’s refusal to take a single moment of this whole debacle lying down - Steve couldn’t let this be his fight. 

“What the fuck are you doing out of-” was as far as Brock got before Steve took advantage of his distraction. He tackled Brock, knocking his former partner to the ground. 

“Keys are on the table. Get _out_ of here,” Steve shouted, trying to pin Brock to the floor. He couldn’t spare even a glance at Bucky, but there was silence for a second before the lamp clattered to the floor and Bucky’s urgent footfalls away from them suggested he was doing as he was told. 

Steve would probably have won in a fair fight, but it was hardly fair. The way he was holding Brock, he couldn’t see the taser from his opponent’s tactical belt. He could certainly feel it though, jammed against his stomach. Steve groaned as every nerve seemed to catch fire, and by the time he recovered enough to breathe, Brock had rolled them over. 

“Can’t have you dying like this. It won’t fit the narrative.” Brock’s smile was gruesome, blood filling some of the lines between his teeth. He turned the taser off, but Steve was too disoriented to move. 

Narrative. Right. Steve didn’t understand the why of it exactly, just that Brock meant to kill him and pretend to be a hero. It was a story that didn’t hold water so long as Bucky knew better, and dazed as he was, Steve clung to that. He could do barely more than whisper, but he shot back anyway, obstinate to the last. “I think you lost your narrative.”

“Not yet I haven’t. You messed up this time, Rogers,” Brock snarled, curling his hand against Steve’s throat. “He was going to live before you went off plan.”

“He doesn’t _know_ anything,” Steve gasped out, the words scraping against his throat with each shallow, strangled breath. Lack of air left him feeling like his head was full of cotton, everything beginning to slip away or sink into the threads of it. 

“I can’t take that chance. Don’t worry. You’ll be right behind him.” The taser clicked on again and if Brock said anything else, Steve didn’t hear it past the agony. His panicked thoughts for Bucky’s safety buoyed Steve for a moment before what coherence he could cling to collapsed into darkness. 

\----------

It should have been glorious standing outside, breathing in fresh air. Mostly though, Bucky was more interested in staying alive than in savoring his newfound freedom. If he stopped to think, he’d just feel guilty for not staying to defend a guy he owed nothing to, a guy who had _told_ him to go. Clutching the keys in his hand, Bucky made a beeline for what he sincerely hoped was Steve’s SUV. 

His breath burned in his chest as he skidded to a stop beside the driver’s side door. He yanked the handle once, twice before realizing it was locked, and of course it was. Why _wouldn’t_ Steve Rogers lock the door to his vehicle to protect it from theft in the middle of goddamned nowhere? With shaking hands, Bucky unlocked the door and let himself in.

There was shouting from inside the cabin, but Bucky didn’t look back. He couldn’t afford to. Slipping into the driver’s seat, he shoved the key into the lock and sucked in a sharp breath as the engine roared to life. 

Moonlight only barely filtered through the trees, and the cabin was surrounded by forest, but Bucky backed out as quickly as he dared. The road had to take him back to civilization eventually, so Bucky headed for it and hoped for the best. For the space of a few heartbeats, he thought he’d gotten away. 

The first shot ricocheted off the frame of the car, a loud crack of metal against metal. The second shattered the rear view mirror, much to Bucky’s horror. Instinctively, Bucky swerved, nearly crashing headfirst into a stand of trees in his frantic efforts to get out of range. 

He’d only just gotten properly back on the path when the third shot found its mark, striking one of the SUV’s tires. Bucky’s course correction swiftly became an overcorrection as the blown out tire left the vehicle dragging at an angle. One hand over the other, Bucky spun the steering wheel back in the other direction, but at the edge of a ravine in the dark, he’d never really stood a chance. 

The crash happened in the space of a few seconds, but Bucky felt like he lived his life from end to end. The blown tire dragged the SUV at an angle that sent it skidding down the ravine on its side, slowed only by the trees it slammed into on the way down. 

In his rush to escape, Bucky had never had time to buckle in. It left him at the mercy of the universe, not that there was any mercy to be found. He was thrown against the door at an agonizing angle, the outcropping where the lock and window buttons sat digging roughly into his ribs. In the face of the tree line he crashed into, Bucky might as well have been a rag doll, the way he was tossed between the steering wheel and the backrest. 

It stopped as abruptly as it had started, with the SUV skidding to a halt at the bottom of the ravine. Frigid water poured through the broken glass, and for a second, Bucky struggled, thinking he might drown on top of everything else. Thrashing uselessly, panic stopped up his throat like he’d swallowed a bottle of glue. At the angle Bucky was stuck, he could do little more than try to lift his head away from the water, dragging in jagged breaths when he could pull in air at all. He could barely think past the haze of trauma and pain, let alone convince himself to assess the situation. After everything he’d been through, it was monumentally unfair that he’d go out like this. 

The water only pooled against the ruined door, more of an insult than a threat. When Bucky was too weak to struggle anymore or hold himself up, he collapsed against the door, dread coiling in his belly as he anticipated the end sweeping over him. The cold water dragged across his face, seeping into his clothes until his teeth chattered, uncomfortable, but unlikely to drown him any time soon. 

Dimly, Bucky was aware that the crash was no accident. There was someone after him. Someone with a rifle, more precisely. They’d been pretty intent on killing him before. He couldn’t imagine that had changed, and even half delirious, he knew he didn’t want to die here.

Gritting his teeth, Bucky tried to get his hands under him to push himself upright, but the car was at an awful angle, and there was shattered glass where he wanted to put his hands. The world was grey around the edges and swiftly fading. Every inch cost him, in fatigue and stabbing pain. He scrabbled blindly over shards of glass, lethargically trying to drag himself free of the wreckage, but it was for nought. In the end, Bucky barely managed to get partially out from behind the steering wheel before he passed out with a thin layer of cold water rushing past his cheek and his bloody palms going limp before he could push the broken bits of windshield free.

\----------

There was the sharp, coppery tang of blood across Steve’s tongue, crowded out by the lingering ache of contracting muscles from the taser. The whole world had gone sideways on him, and for a second all he could do way lie on the floor listening to the roar of an engine. He hoped he’d bought enough time for Bucky to escape. 

No such luck. Before Steve could make much sense of anything, he heard a gunshot and then another. Steve wrenched his head up to look in time to see Brock reloading his rifle. It was all the motivation Steve needed. Ignoring the pain he was in, forced himself to focus. He’d promised to keep Bucky safe and he’d be damned if it ended like this. 

Their scuffle had left Steve on the floor at one end of the couch, and he could just make out the barrel of a handgun half underneath it. Quickly as he could manage, Steve wriggled closer, close enough to wrap his hand around the grip. 

There was no time to think about whether he had it in him to kill someone else. Steve’s vision was still fuzzy, but he could see Brock standing in front of the window well enough. His hands shaky with pain or panic, Steve held the handgun up from where he was sprawled on the floor. His finger only lingered on the trigger for a few seconds before he pulled it. 

It was hardly a lethal shot, and the sound of it was echoed by an awful crash in the distance that clutched at Steve’s heart. He had to get out there to make sure Bucky was okay. The bullet went wide, striking Brock in the shoulder, but it was enough to get him to drop the rifle. It was also enough to give Steve an opening to get to his feet. Gritting his teeth, he sprang upright, kicking the rifle away before Brock could grab it. 

Steve kept a calculated distance between them, too close for Brock to escape the handgun pointed at his head or go for the rifle and too far to get any kind of physical leverage. He sneered at Steve, a hand over his bleeding shoulder. “We both know you’re not going to kill me.”

“I’d rather not, but I _am_ going to stop you,” Steve retorted, motioning towards the open bedroom door. Unarmed and hurting, Brock didn’t push back so much as Steve had anticipated. It took longer than he’d have liked, precious seconds slipping by, but he cuffed Brock to the bed where he’d been holding Bucky. 

“You can’t seriously be planning to leave me here,” Brock growled, pulling uselessly at the chains that held him. 

“I didn’t think you could seriously be planning to kill me,” Steve replied, tucking the handgun away once he’d clicked the safety on. “But here we are.”

Steve left before Brock could say another work, unable to dredge up any kind of guilt about it now. Someone would come check in when he didn’t come back, and Steve and Bucky were going to need every minute they had to get out ahead of all this. If Bucky was even still in one piece. 

It was a thought Steve wasn’t about to dwell on. He paused only long enough to yank on his boots, grab the keys to Brock’s SUV, and sling the rifle over his shoulder, just in case they ran into trouble. With that, he was out the door. 

Steve took off down the road through the woods in search of where Bucky had crashed. The faint streaks of moonlight came and went, threatening to recede entirely. Every frantic breath he drew felt shorter, and he was just beginning to think he’d gone too far when he spotted what he was looking for. 

The SUV was sitting at the bottom of a ravine, a twisted ruin of metal and silver paint. The trees that might have stopped him had to have caught the vehicle at an angle, leaving it on its side, blocking the rush of a tiny stream. 

“Bucky?” Steve called out as he ran down the embankment, heels skidding against leaves and dirt to keep him mostly upright. There was no answer, and his heart clenched in his chest, fearing the worst. 

At the bottom of the ravine, Steve pulled out his phone. It was even darker here and he feared the worst. Turning on the flashlight, Steve wasted no time shining it into the front window o the SUV. 

“Bucky!” Steve tried again, not that it got him any sort of response. Fearing the worst, Steve knelt alongside the car, ignoring the mud already beginning to smear his slacks. 

Bucky was there in the driver’s seat, his pale skin spattered with dirt and blood where the water he was lying in hadn’t washed it away. The front window was coming apart, a thousand tiny fractures caving in like the windshield was made of paper. Steve used the butt of the rifle to clear it away, urgently trying to get to Bucky. 

Without the glass in the way, it was clear that Bucky had either tried to get away or had been thrown very strangely. Steve reached out, pressing his fingers to Bucky’s cold, clammy throat and letting out a relieved sigh when he felt a pulse. “Not dead yet” wasn’t a particularly hopeful rallying cry, but it was better than having failed entirely. 

This was definitely one of those situations where they told you not to move a person, to leave it to the professionals, but Steve was out of options. Kneeling in the muddy water, he reached out, carefully easing Bucky’s limp body from the wreckage. Steve had him halfway out of the car before he heard a low, pained moan from Bucky. 

“Hey. I’ve got you. Just stay with me,” Steve soothed, hooking one arm under Bucky’s knees and using the other to support his back. He was completely soaked, and what Steve could feel of his skin was freezing. 

“...Steve?” Bucky asked. At least it sounded like that maybe was what it was. The word was hopelessly slurred. Before Steve reached the embankment to start climbing up, before he could even put together something to say, Bucky’s head lolled back, and he went quiet.

[](https://imgur.com/qkSvfV7)

He wasn’t entirely sure how he got from the bottom of the embankment back to the other SUV. It happened in a fog, everything lost in the haze of panic that Bucky might die right there in his arms. Steve was vaguely aware of laying Bucky in the driver’s seat, putting the backrest back, and tucking a blanket around his shivering form, but he didn’t remember getting behind the wheel, though it must have happened. 

They were barely clear of the densest part of the woods before Steve floored it. Bucky lay still in the passenger seat. From the corner of Steve eye, he could pick out a wide smear of blood across the pale seat fabric where Bucky’s head had rolled to the side. The worst of the damage was probably tucked under the blankets, but what Steve could see of Bucky gruesome, his pale skin already mottling with bruises. 

Bucky was still breathing, shallow and shaky, when they reached the hospital, and Steve wasted no time carrying him inside. The trek from the car to the emergency room was reduced to details, the weight of Bucky’s limp body in his arms, the piercing glare of fluorescent lights, the gnawing worry in his chest when they wheeled Bucky away and wouldn’t let him follow. 

It was all out of his hands after that. 


	4. Chapter 4

The pain Bucky woke to was scattered across so much of his body that it all just ran together. It was maybe easier to pick out the parts that __didn’t__ hurt, not that he was quite coherent enough for all that. He hadn’t felt this terrible since… no, this was definitely worse than waking up in the cabin. 

__The cabin__. Bucky’s heart seized in his chest as he tried to piece together what had happened. He remembered Brock, the accident, and for a moment he feared the worst. Steve had protected him, but that was before Bucky’s tires had been shot to hell, and Bucky had no idea what came after. 

Without opening his eyes, Bucky knew he wasn’t in the SUV anymore, and he quickly ruled out the cabin too. The air smelled sort of antiseptic, not at all like the cabin he’d existed in for what felt like a lifetime. When Bucky flexed his wrists, there was no familiar weight of metal shackles, no betraying clink of chain links. 

It was a gamble to let on that he was awake, but he couldn’t just lie there forever. If he wasn’t safe, if he could just get his bearings before someone noticed, he might stand a fighting chance. Forcing his breathing to remain quiet and even, Bucky cracked his eyes open. This was definitely not the cabin. 

The white, tiled ceiling was set with fluorescent lights, and gave way at the edges to pale, painted walls. Bucky turned his head to the side and got as far as the plastic barrier along one side of his bed lined with buttons before his investigation of the room was interrupted. “You’re awake.”

Bucky nearly jumped out of his skin before reason caught up with him. It was Steve’s voice from somewhere beyond the other side of his bed, and while that shouldn’t have been such a welcome sound, it was better than just about anyone else’s at the moment. Grimacing at the ache in his neck, Bucky let his head loll to the other side. 

Steve looked just about as awful as Bucky felt. He was hunched over in a plastic looking green recliner beside the bed, rumpled like he’d rolled down that ravine right along with Bucky. His eyes were shadowed and weary, but a tentative smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. 

“Believe it or not, I had noticed that,” Bucky muttered, his voice rasping sharply in his throat. The discomfort must have shown in his expression because Steve moved then, pushing one of those plastic hospital mugs with the flexible straws at him. 

Bucky had the mug balanced in his hands before he realized the wouldn’t be able to drink it sprawled on his back. Disjointedly, he reached for the buttons he’d seen before, but his fingers landed against Steve’s knuckles instead. Somewhere beneath the mattress, a motor sprang to life, and Bucky scowled as his bed shifted, sitting him upright. “I didn’t ask for your help.”

“You didn’t,” Steve conceded. Bucky didn’t look over while he was guzzling down the contents of the mug, but he could practically feel Steve’s eyes on him. “But you have it, anyway.”

Bucky didn’t stop until the cup was empty, and his tongue still felt a little bit parched. He cradled the mug in his hands, clutching just a little bit too tightly. “Why are you still __here__?”

“I told you I’d get you home, and I meant it. I figured I owed you that much, ” Steve started. It was bullshit and they surely both knew it, but the words tumbled off his lips anyway and Bucky stifled a derisive sort of snort. 

“Do you have no sense of self preservation?” Bucky sighed and closed his eyes as he leaned back in the pillows. He was barely pulled together as it was, and the conversation was already exhausting. He followed up with a half-hearted threat. “I could call the cops right now.”

“I’m not going to stop you.”

Steve had been saying that all along, but somehow it was different. Now that there was probably a phone within easy reach, it __meant__ something. Bucky mulled the idea over and tried to ignore the fact that Steve would probably give him the phone if he asked, no matter what it cost to do so. That wasn’t what Bucky asked in the end. “Why are you really here?”

The silence stretched out for so long that Bucky had to crack an eye open to be sure Steve was still there. He hadn’t left the chair, and he wasn’t looking at Bucky anymore. He was staring down at his hands, neatly folded in his lap. At that angle, Steve’s beard masked whatever it was his mouth was doing, but his eyebrows were furrowed in some sort of distress. “You told me to do something different, didn’t you? I can’t take back anything that happened, but I could at least make sure you didn’t have to wake up in a hospital alone.”

Whatever Bucky had expected, that wasn’t it. His chest felt a little bit tight, though he couldn’t begin to sort out why. They weren’t friends. They weren’t anything. Just two people brought together by a completely preposterous set of circumstances that were largely Steve’s fault in the first place. Bucky grimaced at the ache in his shoulders as he reached up a hand to scrub over his face. “You suggesting your company is preferable to being on my own?”

Steve did look up then, his mouth slanting off at an angle as he considered the question. His shoulders rose and fell, the motion sluggish with fatigue Bucky was all too familiar with. “I can leave.”

Did he want Steve to leave? Bucky knew what the answer ought to have been, but nothing that settled on his tongue fit the proper narrative. Huffing in frustration at himself, Bucky deflected, shoving the mug in Steve’s direction. “You can get me another glass of water.”

“Anything you want,” Steve promised, taking the cup without complaint. He was up and out the door in a heartbeat, leaving Bucky staring at the doorway he’d left through. 

“I __want__ my life back,” Bucky mumbled to the empty room. 

In Steve’s absence, Bucky did his very best to melt into the thin hospital pillow and go back to sleep. Not dead was a considerably better state than Bucky had expected to be in, but he still hurt like the dickens. 

He’d nearly dozed off again when he heard the shuffle of footsteps. Cracking one eye open, he spotted Steve setting the empty cup on the side table. “I thought you were bringing me water.”

“I’m so sorry. There’s no time for that.” Steve’s expression was drawn as he picked up Bucky’s ruined clothes and brought them to the bed. “We have to get out of here.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Bucky found himself responding to the urgency in Steve’s tone though. Even as he protested, Bucky pushed himself to sit up. It was officially his least favorite thing he’d done since he’d woken up. 

“Brock wasn’t working alone. He must have assumed I’d bring you here and told them. I spotted them at the nurse’s station at the far end of the hall, so we don’t have much time,” Steve explained as Bucky clumsily swung his legs out from under the blankets. He didn’t want to get up and leave. He wanted to sleep for a week. 

“Are you sure?” It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Brock and Friends were looking for him. It was more that starting an altercation in a hospital full of witnesses sounded like an unlikely plan for someone with any sense at all. 

“I know I don’t have any right to ask this of you, but __please__ trust me.” Steve was so damned earnest about it. More than that, Steve had tricked him one time, the night they met, but he’d never once lied to Bucky. It was a weird, off kilter thing for someone who’d spent their life around cagey, dishonest politicians, but the safe bet was to believe him. 

“You’re right. You don’t, but… fine.” Bucky pushed the blankets out of the way, shivering at the cold air that seeped through the gaps in the back of his hospital gown. “At least… give me a little privacy, would you?”

“I’ll keep an eye out for them,” Steve immediately agreed, shoulders sagging briefly as he let out a sigh. He disappeared out into the hall, closing the door behind him while Bucky tried to shimmy back into his clothes. 

Shimmy was a very strong word for what he was doing, truth be told. His whole body felt like one giant bruise, and pulling his mud stained jeans up over his thighs and hips was agony. Getting rid of the hospital gown was even worse. Bucky reached behind his back, just barely snagging the tie between his shoulder blades before the strain was too much. It took a few more tries to untie the gown and let it slip down his arms to the floor. 

The shirt was similarly difficult to wrangle, but Bucky managed that and his shoes with only one thump on the door from Steve warning him that they were short on time. The second he slipped out the door, Steve was herding him around the corner, but he caught a glimpse of two men walking down the hall, and nothing at all about their gait said they were visiting friends. If Bucky wasn’t convinced before, he certainly was now. 

Bucky took it back. Sitting up was not his least favorite thing he’d done since waking up. Playing mission impossible in a hospital when the best he could do was shuffle along was his least favorite thing. He had no idea how they managed to get out of the hospital and to the car without Brock’s goons finding them. He had no idea how they managed without the hospital __staff__ stopping them, but they got to the parking garage and were almost home free. 

They reached the car just as the two men exited the hospital into the garage, and the calm that Bucky had finally found vanished all over again. They were between the car and the parking garage exit, and Bucky had no idea how they’d get out without being seen. He was so busy trying to peer at them through the glass of the car next to Steve’s SUV that the sound of someone behind him had him sucking in a sharp breath. 

It was only Steve, a finger to his lips to silence Bucky. Steve stuck around long enough to quietly open the SUV door and then disappeared around the front of the car to the other side. Silently as he could, Bucky pulled the door open enough to get inside, cringing as the barely audible squeak of the hinges as he did. 

That Bucky got into the car without crying was nothing short of a miracle. It pulled his aching limbs in all the wrong ways. The seat was back, and he half wanted to put it up again, but there was no time and Steve was motioning for him to lie down anyway. Over the top of the door where the window began, Bucky could see the men moving closer. 

Bucky’s heart hammered in his chest, so hard that he was half convinced someone would hear it. He didn’t move. He barely even breathed while they waited for the danger to pass. In reality, it was only moments, but the stress of the situation stretched each one out like salt water taffy. 

“Stay down,” Steve cautioned as he propped himself up to look through the rear window. Whatever he saw must have satisfied him, because he pulled the seat back up. Bucky followed suit as Steve started the car. He half expected an ambush when they pulled out of the parking space, but none came. It didn’t stop Bucky from watching the shadowy places in the garage until they were free of it. 

They were five miles down the road before the tightness in Bucky's chest eased much at all. Steve rolled to a stop as the light turned red, and Bucky took in their surroundings, but no one was following. "I think we lost them."

When Steve didn't reply, Bucky looked over. Steve's eyes were still on the road, but he was holding out a phone to Bucky. "They're not going to stop as long as we’re loose ends. You should call... I don't know. The cops, your father, __someone__."

"You really __don't__ have any sense of self-preservation, do you?" Bucky took the phone but he didn't dial. If he called the cops, the results would be final in a way he wasn't entirely prepared for. There’d be no more time to decide how on how to explain Steve, who probably didn’t deserve to be lumped in with Brock and his pals. Thumbing at the edge of the phone, Bucky stalled as long as he could before he settled on a response. "Just take me home."

Steve did look at Bucky then, a brief, curious glance before the light turned green and he had to watch the road. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." At best, Bucky figured, at least he'd get to see the look on his father's face that he'd come out of this whole mess in mostly one piece. It wasn't much solace, but it was something. 

Dutifully, Steve took the next exit onto the highway without a word of complaint while Bucky mulled over what to do. The truth would condemn Steve, and Bucky had been certain that was right before, but now nothing made much sense at all. 

"How long a drive is it?" Bucky asked, watching the world go by for what felt like the first time in a lifetime. 

"Eight or nine hours maybe," Steve replied mildly. He seemed focused on the task at hand, as if his entire future wasn't at Bucky's mercy. At least it meant Bucky didn't have to make that call right this second. 

Eight or nine hours also meant a whole hell of a lot more sitting in the passenger seat. Bucky ached all over and having to leave the hospital in such a hurry hadn't helped. He considered trying to sleep it off, lulled by the rumble of asphalt under the tires, but curiosity about what he'd missed won out over fatigue. Settling into his seat a little more, Bucky pulled up the news. 

It wasn't that he'd missed something very specific, but there was a sense of relief in __knowing__. It was politics and business and celebrities, such a cacophony that he nearly missed the article about his disappearance. He scrolled back to it eventually, snorting at the accompanying picture of he and his father on a stage somewhere. "Oh look. I'm famous."

"What? I didn't think it had been allowed to make it into the media..." Steve murmured, expression scrunching in confusion. 

"Eh, he probably wants to control the narrative. If there's a way he can spin it in his favor, believe me. He will." Bucky started to rattle off as he read. “Probably something about how distraught he is and how they’re doing everything they can or some such bullshit.”

Only, Bucky got halfway through the article and froze. He didn’t realize how still and silent he’d gone until Steve spoke up. “Are you okay? What’s it say?”

“It… this can’t be __right__.” Bucky read again and again, but the words didn’t change, and something awful gnawed at him just behind his ribs. “He’s claiming his security team tracked me down last night, but that you took me and fled.”

Steve’s breath let out all at once. “Me specifically?”

“You specifically. How could he know we left yesterday?” Bucky’s voice hitched up at the end as he ran through the possibilities. Each one was worse than the last. “How would he know about the cabin at all?”

“Brock was the only one who dealt with him. He wouldn’t have told the senator anything unless…” Steve trailed off and Bucky looked up to see a grim frown tugging the corners of his mouth down. 

“Unless?” Bucky prompted when Steve didn’t continue. 

“When Brock showed up, he said it was time for you to go home, but nothing had changed. He was ready to kill me long before things went sideways on him, so maybe he went rogue and decided what we were fighting for wasn’t worth what it was going to cost.” Steve paused, his lips pursed as he stared at the road ahead. Bucky wasn’t sure which one of them he was sorrier for just then.

“Or it’s all a setup. Maybe Brock’s crew was working with my father all along.” Bucky sucked in a long, slow breath and tried to still the tremor down his spine at what he was suggesting. “Would your people do that?” 

“They’re not my people, Bucky. This is the only time I’ve worked with them.” Steve shifted in his seat, eyes glued to the road ahead. “Would your father?”

“No! I mean…” Bucky started to argue, even though it had been his suggestion in the first place, but he had to admit that it made more sense than anything he’d come up with. He hadn’t seen anyone but Steve until the night before. He’d only heard the muffled evidence of a second voice to know there was anyone else at all. If Steve hadn’t been in the midst of letting him go, Brock could have killed Steve and told Bucky he was anyone and there’d have been no one to tell him different. Even the tactical gear made sense, if he meant to play it off like he was some kind of agent. Brock could have brought him home and his dad would have come out looking like a hero who stood by his political principles, and took looking after his family into his own hands. His constituents would have eaten it up, and the other side couldn’t question him too harshly without looking bad themselves. “...maybe.”

Steve hummed out a quiet acknowledgment. “Maybe there’s another explanation.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” Bucky replied, though they both knew better. “But until we’re sure, I don’t think I can go home.”

“The police station, then?” Steve offered, and something about that pulled at Bucky, that Steve would be willing to do such a thing knowing the cost. 

Bucky didn’t make his decision based on Steve though. “Who knows how well they covered their tracks? I don’t think the cops are the right answer either right now.”

If Steve had an opinion about Bucky’s line of reasoning, he didn’t share it. “Is there somewhere else you’d like to go?”

The question should have been an easy one. Bucky had wanted to go home for what felt like a lifetime, but there was nothing for him there. Nowhere else felt safe either, leaving Bucky every bit as trapped as he’d been chained to a bed in a cabin in the woods. He shook his head, closing his eyes in hope that sleep would give him some kind of relief. “Doesn’t matter. Just drive.”

\----------

As badly as Steve had felt for what he'd put Bucky through, it paled in comparison to discovering how their paths had really crossed. Bucky, who was so sharp-tongued and sarcastic, hadn't shown a flicker of either in hours. He'd begrudgingly admitted that the only real chance they had to get through this was to stick together, and then he'd fallen silent, expression shuttered as he stared at the road ahead. 

They drove for hours before Steve was forced to pull into a nondescript old motel. Much to his relief, the woman behind the counter didn't comment on his disheveled appearance. She barely looked at him at all before handing over two old, brass keys on orange fobs emblazoned with 131. 

The walk from the car to the room could have been a funeral march. Bucky let himself be herded from the card, though perhaps 'let' was too strong a word. Mostly, Steve pushed a key into his palm and Bucky sighed, sliding out of the passenger seat with all the energy of a leaky faucet. 

Steve unlocked the door, revealing a small room, little more than two beds and a bathroom. Old cigarette smoke yellowed the walls, and a scratched up dresser in the corner housed an ancient television set on top. None of it mattered, of course. They'd come to get some sleep, not to be enthralled by the furnishings or the entertainment. 

The promise of a hot shower was something though, and Steve turned to Bucky with every intention of urging him along. He never made it that far. Steve's voice died in his throat as he took in Bucky's silhouette, wearily slouched where he stood in the space between the two beds. The weight of danger and betrayal pulled at Bucky’s frame, leaving him looking small and lost in a way that twisted in Steve’s chest. 

"Bucky?" Steve found himself asking instead. He cautiously took a step closer. The dim side table lamp did so little to light up Bucky's face that it was hard to read his expression. "Are you alright?"

Bucky huffed out a laugh, a sad, thready thing, strangled by grief. "Never thought I'd miss when being kidnapped was worst thing I had to worry about."

Sucking a breath through his teeth, Steve faltered over an answer. “I’m sorry. For what I did, for all of it.”

“If it hadn’t been you, it would have just been someone else and either I wouldn’t be around to complain about it now or I wouldn’t have even known the truth,” Bucky replied petulantly. His eyes went abruptly wide, the whites of them catching the lamplight, and Steve swore he could feel the moment Bucky registered the full weight of that revelation. “I expected him not to come after me, you know? I never had any illusions about where I was on his priority list.”

“Bucky…” Steve swallowed down the urge to say anything further. He didn’t have tools to try and soothe the hurt Bucky felt, didn’t even really have the right. 

Bucky didn’t seem to hear Steve anyway. His breath came quick, almost panicky, and his jaw trembled before he could finish. “But if he put that statement out, he has to know what that means for me. Was..was I __that__ much of an inconvenience for him?”

Steve had been so caught up in the logistical nightmare of keeping them alive long enough to solve this, he hadn’t even had time to consider the emotional toll. He didn’t know Brock well enough for the betrayal to sting as much as he knew it ought to, but Bucky. That was his __family__. He didn’t hurt for himself, but he certainly hurt for what Bucky had been put through. “You’re not an inconvenience.”

“Yeah, says the guy who kept me handcuffed to a bed,” Bucky muttered, but there was no bite to it, the words no more than a verbal shrug. Steve hated himself for having done it anyway. No one deserved that, and Bucky even less than most.

"We're going to figure this out," Steve heard himself say, though they both knew it was only platitude. 

Even in the weak lighting, Steve could see the way Bucky's mouth screwed up, and nothing could quite mask the shallow shakiness of his breathing. "You can't know that."

Steve opened his mouth to say something, anything, but it was all ash on his tongue. He couldn't piece Bucky's life back together. He couldn't even be sure he'd live to see the outcome of all this, and they both knew it. With no other hope to offer, Steve took a step and then another, closing the space between them. 

He'd expected Bucky to complain, to push him away, something. Steve had counted on it really, hoping to stoke some spark of life. Steve carefully curled his arms around Bucky's back, moving by fractions. He waited for the pushback, his heart hammering in his chest all the while. 

Bucky stiffened in his grip and raised his hand to Steve’s chest. There was very briefly pressure as Bucky pushed back, but it was a half hearted gesture, accompanied by none of the furious energy Steve had anticipated. Steve thought he ought to pull away anyway, and meant to, but before he realized what was happening, Bucky gave up, wilting into the embrace with a soft, miserable sound.

Steve didn't mean to stay, but Bucky had crumpled like Steve was the only thing holding him upright. It couldn't have been much comfort all things considered, but if life was so bleak that Bucky would resort to seeking out refuge here, Steve wasn't about to deny him. 

"I'm so sorry," Steve mumbled against Bucky's hair. There was no response except for a choked out sob, muffled against his chest as Steve gathered Bucky close. It was followed by another and another, and the real miracle, Steve supposed, was that Bucky had borne so much before it happened. 

It was hard to say how long they stayed there, clinging to the relative peace at the center of a hurricane. Bucky shuddered in Steve’s embrace but didn’t pull away. Not when Steve smoothed his hand over Bucky’s back and shoulders. Not when, his breathing smoothed out to only the occasional stutter. Steve only moved when Bucky sagged against his chest, exhaustion crowding out any effort to stay upright. 

Wordlessly, Steve put just enough space between them that he could steer Bucky towards one of the beds. Bucky didn’t put up much of a fight, beyond a hiss through his teeth at movements that had to still hurt. Steve let go of Bucky to pull the covers back. “Try to get some sleep, okay? It’ll be better in the morning.”

Bucky didn’t put up a fight about that either. He nodded once, the only thing about him that suggested he’d even heard, and sank down at the edge of the bed to take off his shoes. Bucky moved woodenly, a shell that did as it was encouraged to, but no more. He crawled under the covers still in his ruined clothes, and didn’t even bother to turn away before curling up in the middle of the narrow hotel bed. 

Steve meant to go take a shower after that, but it felt almost criminal to leave Bucky alone like this. He took a seat in the worn out little hotel chair in the corner and stayed long after Bucky had drifted off to sleep. 


	5. Chapter 5

Steve had been right about one thing. Though sleep didn’t exactly improve the situation, at least the overwhelming despair of it all had receded a little. Bucky had survived everything else. He was going to survive this too. 

That meant he had to get up, though. Wincing, Bucky lurched upright, thanking his lucky stars that he felt at least marginally less terrible than the day before. He braced himself before turning his head to look at the other bed, relieved to find it didn’t hurt so badly as he’d anticipated. 

Steve had to have slept - or tried to - at some point, judging by the rumpled sheets, but the bed was empty. There hotel room was silent and the bathroom door was wide open and appeared to be empty, but Bucky called out anyway. “Steve?”

Nothing answered Bucky except for silence. It shouldn’t have been such a nerve wracking thing. Bucky had spent plenty of time eager to be rid of Steve if he was gone - and he probably wasn’t - and Bucky wasn’t helpless, even if everything hurt a whole hell of a lot at the moment. He hadn’t heard Steve slip out, so it probably hadn’t been a violent sort of exit. Probably. 

They were all things that should have been reassuring, but since they weren’t Bucky opted to soothe his frazzled nerves by investigating further. Hissing through his teeth at the way it ached, Bucky slipped out from under the covers and shuffled to the window. He peeked out the edge of the blinds and saw a number of vehicles, none of which were Steve’s. 

For a second, Bucky entertained the gnawing worry that Steve had abandoned him. It didn’t sound at all consistent with anything Bucky knew about Steve, but if his current predicament had taught him anything, it was that you never really knew anyone. He hoped that wasn’t the case, but decided he ought to plan for it anyway. 

Bucky raked a hand through his hair as he considered what to do, grimacing at the tacky feel of it. The first thing, he decided, was a shower. The disaster he’d stumbled into could wait until he was done. 

The cheap motel they’d ended up in was such in every sense of the word. There was barely enough room to turn around, and the pipes protested when Bucky turned on the shower with a drawn out squeal. There was a little boxed up sliver of soap though, and a bottle that claimed to be shampoo, so Bucky gingerly shucked his clothes and stepped under the spray.

At least the water was hot. The pressure was terrible and the water went off at a funny angle, but it got the job done. A glance down at the green and purple splotches he could see across his ribs were enough to tell him he probably didn’t want to look in the mirror. Even the gentle swipe of his soapy fingers over his skin was punctuated by a dull ache. Nothing was broken, theoretically, but it didn’t seem to be for lack of trying. 

He almost didn’t catch the creak of the front door over the shower spray beating against the plastic shower wall. Bucky definitely heard the door click shut though, his heart immediately catching in his chest. Gut instinct made him look for a weapon, even though he wasn’t at all likely to fend off an attacker with hotel toiletries. 

The bathroom was otherwise sparse in terms of anything that could be removed or used to defend himself. Mostly, Bucky’s efforts only turned up a cheap plastic hair dryer sitting on the counter. It wasn’t much to work with, but if that was all Bucky had, he’d damned well make do.

Leaving the water running, Bucky slipped out of the shower and briskly toweled off. He was just grabbing for his clothes when someone knocked against the door, sharply enough to make it rattle in its frame. Bucky yelped in surprise before he could stop himself. Instinctively, he tucked a towel around his waist and grabbed for the hair dryer, squaring his shoulders like it made him even remotely more imposing. 

“Bucky? Are you okay?” Steve’s voice was muffled through the door, and of _course_ it was Steve. That was about the time Bucky’s common sense caught up enough to point out that a killer probably wouldn’t have bothered knocking.

Bucky flung the door open anyway, glowering at a very surprised looking Steve Rogers, whose hand was poised to knock on the door again. “You could have told me you were leaving.”

“I… did?” Steve visibly winced as his eyes flicked over the bruises that littered Bucky’s bare torso. “I didn’t figure you’d appreciate being woken up, so I left you a note. I wouldn’t have just left you here without saying.”

It was a reasonable response, and even though every inch of Bucky wanted to argue, he knew it was probably true. Of course, that left him scowling at Steve in a bath towel, holding a hair dryer like he meant to bludgeon someone with it, and all the bravado that had put him in that particular situation leaking away. In the back of his mind, Bucky knew he’d usually be embarrassed, but honestly, he’d lost everything else already. His dignity didn’t amount to much in comparison. 

Steve’s lips parted right about the time his gaze settled on the hair dryer. Bucky braced himself, but Steve kindly didn’t comment on the improvised weapon. Even more kindly, he offered up a clean set of clothes. “I figured these might be an improvement.”

They were definitely an improvement. Bucky wasn’t sure if the soft fabric and elastic was out of consideration for his injuries or just that Steve didn’t know what size to get, but he was grateful for it anyway. Taking them in one hand, Bucky gestured awkwardly with the other, the hair dryer banging against the door frame. There. There was the embarrassment he’d thought he’d staved off, creeping warmly across his cheeks as he realized how completely ridiculous he must look. “I’m just gonna… put this away.”

Buck could see Steve doing his best to tamp down a smile. It only escaped briefly, a faint upward curve of his lips. “Sure, of course. There’s coffee out here when you’re done.”

Steve retreated before Bucky even quite got the bathroom door closed. For a second, Bucky leaned against it, back against the painted plywood as he tried to get his bearings. Steve hadn’t abandoned him. No one had tried to murder him in the shower. He didn’t even have to get back into his dirty, bloodstained clothes. In the grand scheme of things, it was a better day that most of the ones he’d had lately. 

Gingerly, Bucky finished drying off and dressing. He didn’t look quite as dreadful as he’d expected when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, just tired and a little beat up. There was little hope of sleeping off the fatigue, but there was coffee, the promise of which was enough to eventually lure him out of the bathroom. 

There was more than coffee as it turned out. The sheets on the bed where Bucky had slept were straightened out, and Steve had dumped a pile of various plastic wrapped pastries that looked like it was meant to feed a high school football team. “Did you buy the entire convenience store? What are we supposed to do with all these?”

“Eat them?” Steve shrugged, handing over a paper cup full of coffee to Bucky. “I didn’t know what kind you liked.”

“Well, and the obvious solution is just to get _all_ of them.” Bucky shook his head and took a sip, humming as he finally managed to unwind a little. It wasn’t exactly surprising that Steve knew how Bucky drank his coffee. He’d made it plenty of times while Bucky had been stuck at the cabin. It was oddly touching though, that he went to the effort to get it right now. 

Touching didn’t even seem like quite the right word. Endearing, maybe? Bucky nearly choked on his coffee at the idea. It wasn’t like he _liked_ Steve. It was just that if Bucky had to be stuck on the run, there were far worse people to be stuck with. 

“Glad we agree,” Steve replied mildly, blissfully unaware of Bucky’s internal turmoil. 

Bucky wasn’t the only one who had changed, as it turned out. Steve had traded out his flannel shirt for… Actually, it was just a different flannel shirt, but it was a flattering shade of blue. It also left Steve looking a little less like some kind of lumberjack hermit and a little more like a hipster, but it was a good look anyway. 

“Bucky?” Steve’s voice was soft but urgent, like he was worried about something, but Bucky was still staring at the way the fabric of Steve’s shirt settled around his shoulders. Wait. He was _staring_. This morning just got better and better. 

“What? Sorry, I was… thinking,” Bucky finished lamely, shaking his head as he set his coffee aside. 

Steve waved it off. “I was just saying we need a plan. We can’t camp out in motels forever.”

“Is that your way of saying you _have_ a plan or are you stating the obvious?” Bucky retorted, deciding they were probably equally likely possibilities. 

Steve paused to sip his coffee and opened a cheese danish while he continued. “I might, but it’s kind of a project.”

A project. That sounded like it was going to be a conversation, so Bucky sank down on the foot of the nearest bed, briefly clenching his jaw at the way it jostled him. “What kind of project are we talking?”

“We know what’s going on now,” Steve started, leaning against the dresser where he stood across from Bucky. He was uncharacteristically careful in his approach, and while that was kind, it was also pointless as far as Bucky was concerned.

“My father hired some assholes to kidnap me to make himself look better,” Bucky muttered acerbically. He sagged where he sat, bitterly resigned to this particular truth. “You can say it. It’s not a secret.”

Steve’s teeth worked over his bottom lip, body language Bucky had come to translate as him thinking about something. “It’s not enough that we know. We have to _prove_ it.”

“That’s a nice idea, Steve, but it’s our word against theirs and how do you think that’s going to go? I know it’s true and I still hardly believe me.” Bucky dragged his hands through his hair, clenching his fingers in frustration. Put so plainly, it felt hopeless. The minute he went to the cops he gave up any chance of directing blame where it was meant to go, but the chances of them figuring out how to make anyone believe them before Steve’s former friends got to them felt… slim. 

“For now,” Steve conceded. He paused for a second, thumb crinkling the pastry wrapper he was holding. “We need evidence. If your father bankrolled this operation, the money came and went somewhere.”

There was not enough coffee in the _world_ for this. “I’ll just hack into my dad’s bank account and look for the payment labeled “asshole kidnappers” shall I?”

“That’s not what I…” Steve made a face, and where a day or two previously Bucky probably wouldn’t have cared if his comment stung, he felt just a bit bad about it now. 

“Sorry. It’s probably labeled “asshole kidnappers and that Steve guy who makes terrible life choices”. My bad,” Bucky amended with a shadow of a smile. Steve’s expression smoothed out and Bucky noted with some measure of relief that he’d managed to head off the tension that had cropped up between them. 

“Are you done?” Steve’s tone was calm despite his choice of words, and the shake of his head looked more like amusement than annoyance. “I was trying to say that I know someone who could help us.”

Any levity Bucky felt was leached away at the prospect of trusting yet another stranger. Trusting his _family_ hadn’t worked so well, and given Steve’s judgment led to him working with Brock, paranoia seemed like the only reasonable response. 

“She’s trustworthy,” Steve added when Bucky didn’t reply. 

“You trusted Brock and company too,” Bucky blurted out before he could stop himself. “Now they’re trying to kill us.”

Bucky half expected Steve’s demeanor to sour, but it didn’t. He was adamant though. “They were colleagues. Natasha is different.”

Unsure how to parse that, Bucky asked the first thing that came to mind. It wasn’t any of his business, and he should have felt at all invested in the answer and yet… “Girlfriend?”

Steve had been trying to drink his coffee. Trying was the key word, given the way he spluttered it out. “No. Friend friend.”

“Good. That’s good, because I draw the line at being stuck in the middle of other people’s romantic nonsense,” Bucky retorted, reaching for a pastry in the hopes of shoving it in his mouth before he said anything _more_ ridiculous.

Chewing on puff pastry and raspberry filling gave him time to weigh the risks. It was possible this Natasha person would refuse to help or betray them, but neither scenario was at all certain. What was certain was that on their own, the best Bucky could hope for was half truths that would leave them both looking over their shoulders the rest of their lives. At worst… Bucky didn’t want to think about at worst. 

“Okay...” Bucky agreed tentatively around the last of his pastry, like the concession had been dragged out of him. “If you think she can help, let’s do it.”

“We’re going to get out of this,” Steve promised, stepping away from the dresser to start gathering their things. It was empty, but Bucky clung to it anyway. He’d hang on to anything that might prevent a repeat of last night. 

Finally remembering his coffee, Bucky got up from the bed to reclaim what was left of it. “I’m holding you to that.”

“You don’t get to start holding me to anything until we get out of here, so get your stuff together.” The retort was a friendly one that left Bucky curious, not for the first time, how they’d landed here. They weren’t friends, exactly, but maybe they were because Bucky didn’t have a better word for it. 

“Says the guy who dumped a truckload of gas station pastries on the bed.” Bucky got going anyway, not that he had much to pack up.

“Oh, and Bucky? I told you I wrote a note,” Steve murmured, briskly leaning down to scoop something up off the floor. He handed over what turned out to be a folded over piece of motel letterhead paper with Bucky’s name printed across one side in neat, blocky handwriting that must have been Steve’s. The note inside was short and to the point. 

_Bucky,_

_I’m running an errand. I didn’t go far. Call me if you need anything._

_Steve_

There was a phone number scrawled at the bottom of the paper, an afterthought probably when Steve realized Bucky didn’t already have it. Bucky grimaced, realizing how cross he’d been for what it turned out was no reason. Sheepishly, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry about that.”

“No reason to be.” Steve paused his current efforts to scoop the pastries into a duffle bag he’d gotten from… somewhere to grin at Bucky. Honestly, Bucky wasn’t sure whether to gawp at the display of problem solving skills that made them look like a couple of runaway teenagers, or that, for a second, Steve looked genuinely happy despite everything. It was a startlingly pleasant look on him. “Next time I’ll just tape it to your forehead.”

\----------

“I thought we were going to this Natasha person’s house?” Bucky asked as Steve parked the car in a desolate, unpaved parking lot. Just ahead was a sprawling, windowless building, a heavy steel door surrounded by cinder blocks.

Steve smiled and opened the car door. “More or less.”

“Steve. This is a _warehouse_. You’re really not selling this “Natasha is a non-scary good person who is going to help us” narrative.”

A sharp laugh escaped Steve before he could help himself. “I _never_ said she wasn’t scary.” 

“You never said she lived in a creepy warehouse either,” Bucky grumbled as he fell into step next to Steve. 

For the space of a few steps, there was nothing but the crunch of their shoes against gravel as they crossed the parking lot. They’d nearly reached the door of the building when Steve’s phone chimed, alerting him to a text message. He didn’t recognize the number, but he knew who it was anyway.

_Why are you here?_

Steve briefly debated how best to frame the situation. Natasha was, not precisely fickle, but the things that piqued her interest were a mystery to him, even after all these years. All those years hopefully amounted to something though, so Steve fell back on honesty. 

_I didn’t know where else to go. I need help._

The response came almost immediately, one message after another while Steve and Bucky stood outside the door. 

_I know that. Half the country knows that at this point._

_But why are you HERE?_

“Is that her or should we try knocking on the door or something?” Bucky asked, poised to do exactly that. Steve’s heart sank as he reread Natasha’s texts, but he pressed on anyway.

_I thought if anyone could help, it’d be you._

There was no response at first, only the empty echo of Bucky’s knuckles rapping against the steel door. Steve was dreading having to tell Bucky she wasn’t going to let them in after having to convince him to come here in the first place. When the message finally came through, Steve braced himself, expecting a rejection that never came.

_Obviously, but not in an empty building. We’ve been out of there for months._

“You can stop knocking. She’s not here,” Steve said as he typed out a response. 

_Still keeping tabs?_

“How do you know that?” Bucky tilted his head, looking over the building as if to catch something he might have missed. 

Steve waved his phone at Bucky as it lit up with another message. “She told me.”

Bucky must have been feeling better, much to Steve’s relief. He huffed dramatically, fidgeting outside the door of the empty building. “She told you where she isn’t. Might be nice if she’d tell you where she _is_ , instead.”

_Lucky for you._

_I’m sending coordinates. Be there in an hour._

“You were saying?” Steve asked, flashing the coordinates at Bucky when they came through before he tapped out a reply.

_Thanks Nat._

“If it’s another warehouse, I’m smothering you with our overabundance of pastries,” Bucky retorted. He was already away from the door and heading towards the car though, which Steve took to be a good sign. Steve waited until he reached the car to check his phone for her reply. 

_Don’t thank me. Just be there._

_And get rid of the phone. It’s like you’ve never been on the run before._

Even in text, Natasha was a bastion of familiarity in a situation full of unknowns. Steve relished it, knowing there was at least one friend he could count on. There was Bucky too, of course, but Steve had to assume their camaraderie was more about circumstances than anything else. 

_I’ve never been on the run before,_ Steve pointed out, hovering at the door of the SUV to finish their conversation. 

_Amateur._ Steve could practically read the smile she’d be hiding away as she insulted him. He got in and started the car, meaning to find the nearest trash can to dump the phone when it went off one last time. 

_Scratch that, actually. Bring the phone._

\----------

The coordinates, as it turned out, were not where Natasha was, but at least they weren’t at a warehouse either. Instead, they were for what turned out to be the start of some kind of scavenger hunt Steve definitely hadn’t signed up for. 

Natasha had them all over town, dropping Steve’s phone in a faraday bag at an old farmhouse and picking up a burner from a bus station locker somewhere else. There was a single number in it and a text with still more coordinates, so off they went again. To his credit, Bucky had come along with only moderate complaining about Natasha’s methods. 

“This is… excessive, don’t you think?” Bucky asked after the third stop they made turned up a note instead of Natasha. “I’m starting to think she’s some kind of criminal.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call her a criminal,” Steve murmured, wondering if that was precisely true. It wasn’t that she didn’t do things that were probably _supposed_ to be illegal, but she deftly navigated around the law better than any lawyer Steve had ever met. 

Bucky made a face as they walked down a quiet alley to pull a note Natasha had taped to a door there. “Because she isn’t one or because you don’t want to say it?”

“Natasha operates in shades of gray,” Steve tried to explain. He wasn’t really sure how to make sense of her to someone else. As it turned out, he didn’t need to expound any further on it. The note came away easily from the door if one could call it a note. It was just a paper menu for a cafe. 

“I suppose you’ll see for yourself soon enough,” he offered, leading the way back down the alley. “I think we’ve got our final destination.”

\----------

The final destination Steve mentioned was so different from any of the other locations Natasha had sent them through, Bucky thought at first they’d gotten it wrong. Wrought iron patio furniture framed the door, and the gold, looping lettering overhead made Bucky wonder if they’d draw attention dressed so casually. 

In they went anyway. The inside of the cafe was every bit as lovely, a serene, elegant place that made Bucky worry even more. No one seemed to notice them, though, and Bucky took in their surroundings, looking for someone who might be Natasha. It didn’t help, he realized, that he had no clue what she looked like. 

Steve did though, and so Bucky looked where he did, at the top of a woman’s head over the top of a newspaper, vibrant falls of red hair drawing Bucky’s gaze. When Steve didn’t move right away, Bucky didn’t either. Eventually a soft chuckle from Steve made him turn his head. 

“What?” Bucky frowned at Steve, who answered by flashing Bucky the screen of the burner phone they’d acquired on their scavenger hunt all over town.

_Are you boys going to stand there staring all day or are you going to come sit down?_

Natasha didn’t put the newspaper down until the two of them were seated, and whatever Bucky had thought she was going to be like, this wasn’t it. She was smartly dressed, and looked every bit as elegant as the cafe they were sitting in, pale and fine featured. He thought he saw a shadow of a smile, but it was hard to tell because it flitted away as quickly as it had come. 

"Your phone, please." A diamond bracelet caught the sunlight from beneath the cuff of her silk blouse as she reached out a slender wrist towards Steve. He offered it up without the slightest hesitation, and it pulled a smile from her, a real one. "The other phone, Steve."

"Right..." Steve ducked his head and dug his usual phone out of his pocket. She plucked it from his hand with long, delicate fingers and subtly dropped it into a shiny, reflective bag that she'd pulled from... Bucky didn't know where, actually. If he hadn't been sitting at the table actively watching her, he probably wouldn't have even noticed. 

"What is that?" Bucky kept his voice hushed in case anyone was listening. He couldn't help the nervous energy that made him glance to the side, searching for anyone who might be watching them. 

"Faraday bag," Natasha replied lightly once Bucky had turned back to face her. "In the event that anyone is using the phone to try and track your location, they will very soon be on their way to Odessa, Texas."

"Where are we going?" Steve asked, and Bucky marveled at how easily he handed over their wellbeing to her. Bucky just hoped she was more trustworthy than Brock. 

"Well, not Odessa." A smirk tugged one corner of Natasha's mouth up. "Just try and stay out of trouble until I can pin them down." 

Bucky shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He swallowed down the nervous, jittery feeling as he realized how much she had to know to have said that. Once again, he glanced at the busy cafe, but no one was watching them. "We never told you what happened..."

"There are very few reasons you two would have ended up in the situation you're in, and even fewer that would also keep you traveling together." Natasha paused to sip at her coffee, her bright green eyes fixed on Bucky over her mug. "Hang on to that suspicion though. Maybe it'll keep this one alive."

"That was uncalled for," Steve protested, but there was no bite in it at all. He relaxed in his chair like they were old friends, and Bucky assumed they must have been. 

"I think the word you were looking for is 'accurate' or am I wrong in thinking a little bit of suspicion might have kept you out of this mess in the first place?" Natasha teased, or at least, Bucky assumed she was teasing. Her expression was nearly inscrutable. 

"It's great you figured it out, but it's not that simple a conclusion to draw or we'd be able to trust everyone to make that leap. So, what are we supposed to do?" He'd feel better, Bucky hoped, if he just had a plan. If Steve believed Natasha would give them one, he was willing to at least try to trust her. 

"Lucky for you two, betrayal tends to leave a paper trail when there is money involved.” Natasha dragged her fingertips deliberately along the edge of her mug, the motion just enough to draw Bucky’s gaze. “Which there must be in this case." 

Bucky’s eyes flicked back up curiously at her, wishing he knew where to begin puzzling her out. "Because it makes the most sense?"

Natasha laughed, a dainty, breathy sound that Bucky didn’t believe for a second. "Because Steve wouldn’t have brought it to me unless it was my area of expertise."

Steve had mostly been quiet, letting Bucky and Natasha get acquainted, but he chose that moment to interject. "If there is anyone on the planet that can bring this to light, it's going to be Natasha."

"I already said I'd help you, Steve. There’s no need for flattery.” Natasha’s lips formed a straight line, but her eyes crinkled warmly at the corners. Something about it only added to Bucky’s discomfort, though he couldn’t put the why of it into words. 

Eager to shake off the feeling, Bucky barreled right on. "So, what is your area of expertise? You're some kind of hacker?"

"Not specifically, no." Natasha was maddeningly unruffled by the line of questioning, looking at him like he’d asked about the weather. Bucky hoped he never had to play poker with her. Or, compete with her on much of anything for that matter.

She hadn’t answered his question though, so Bucky tried again. "What, specifically, are you?"

"I have a knack for gathering information, is all. What I am is resourceful." Natasha’s narrow shoulders rose and fell and her tone sharpened almost imperceptibly, inviting no further questions.

"Gathering information..." Bucky repeated the summarily unhelpful explanation. Data analysts gathered information. Customer service reps gathered information. Secret agents gathered information. None of those were remotely the same thing. 

She raised one carefully shaped eyebrow at Bucky. "Is that judgment I'm sensing?"

"No. It's not that,” Bucky scrambled to explain. Steve laughed and Bucky kicked his shin under the table. “It’s really not.”

The explanation must have mollified Natasha, because her expression smoothed out, and she nodded approvingly. "Good. Because you can have your moral high ground or you can have your life back, but I'm afraid you're going to have a difficult time hanging on to both."

“You sound like a politician,” Bucky mused, watching Natasha. He'd grown up around enough intrigue to know that people were rarely entirely what they seemed, but she had it down to an art form. Every inch of her, every expression, every mannerism was utterly intentional, leaving Bucky wondering if he’d really met her at all. 

“Familiar territory, then. I would think that that’s-” Natasha stopped talking mid sentence, while Bucky looked over his shoulder once again, worried about the sensitive subject matter they were discussing. “You’re not particularly subtle are you, James?”

Bucky’s head jerked back around, his eyes widening in surprise. “Me?”

“Was there some other James at the table?” A faint smirk creased Natasha’s lips, there and gone as she inclined her head towards Steve. “Besides, I already _know_ he doesn’t have a subtle bone in his body.”

Bucky took it back. _That_ was genuine. If he couldn’t be certain he knew anything else about her, whatever fondness she had for Steve was enough.

“What? I can be subtle,” Steve objected from beside Bucky. “I can absolutely be subtle.”

“Absolutely,” Natasha agreed, smiling more broadly. “You’re subtle in the way that… oh… red lipstick is subtle.”

“Red lipstick isn’t…” Steve paused, catching up with what she’d said, and Bucky couldn’t help gleefully watching the way his nose crinkled up as he recognized the playful insult. Bucky didn’t have any business finding it cute, but it really sort of was. 

Eager to shake that particular line of thinking, Bucky interrupted. “So, what do we do now?”

“Now we get you two somewhere safe while I redirect your friends,” Natasha paused, crinkling the faraday bag just loudly enough that Bucky could hear, “And then we get started on the real work.”


	6. Chapter 6

When Natasha had promised them a safe house while she disposed of Steve’s old phone, Bucky had imagined the sort of thing you saw in the movies. He’d thought secret high tech security systems and things, and with a woman like Natasha Romanoff, that didn’t seem like it was so far fetched. It wasn’t what they got though. 

What they got was a hidden basement under a dive bar, the floorboard entrance hidden under crates. It was a dusty, narrow place with two cots very nearly side by side, and stacks of nondescript boxes along one wall. Bucky felt a little less like he’d found safety and a little more like he’d resigned himself to being some kind of fugitive. 

Steve, on the other hand, rolled with it the way he did everything. It struck Bucky just then that Steve had lost things too in all this, had been betrayed by people he’d probably trusted. He’d never once complained about it, even though it had to hurt. There was a weariness to him though, his expression pinched when he didn’t think anyone was looking. If Bucky could have brought himself to broach the topic, he might have asked. Instead, he watched Steve settle in on one of the cots with his back against the wall, and asked something else instead. “Who the hell travels with a faraday bag just… because?”

That pulled a smile out of Steve. It was small and distant, but genuine. “Natasha. Obviously.”

“Yeah, but why? How does a person reach a point where that’s their idea of prepared for their daily routine?” It wasn’t help, not really, but Bucky hoped conversation might at least give Steve something less unhappy to think about. 

Steve shook his head, looking at Bucky just a second too long, like he knew exactly what this was about. “I stopped asking that years ago.”

“That’s… Actually, that’s probably fair,” Bucky conceded, taking stock of the tiny room before he plopped down on the other cot. There were a couple of well worn paperback books on a pile of boxes along one side, but he couldn’t read the titles. “What I should really be asking is who has creepy basements at their disposal in some podunk town we just _happen_ to be traveling through?”

“You _met_ her. Why is any of this surprising?” Steve’s expression was still a little bit drawn, but a low chuckle escaped his throat, and Bucky watched his posture relax by fractions. The artificial light caught his features just so. It left Steve looking oddly soft despite the shaggy hair and raggedy beard he was currently sporting. 

The conversation hit a dead end, and the silence that seeped in should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t at all. It was the quiet lull in conversation between people who understood each other, with no pressure to fill in the gaps. They may as well have been friends, and maybe that was exactly what they were becoming, because Bucky didn’t see an enemy in him anymore. Friends… or something.

Bucky was so caught up in his thoughts that it took him a moment to register Steve was talking to him. “Do you think you’ll go home? When this is all over, I mean.”

“Why? Are you gonna miss me?” The retort came automatically, as easy as breathing. 

Bucky had no idea what to make of the somber look Steve was giving him, though he was sure it meant something. Steve’s mouth pulled down at the corners, his brows furrowing in… thought? Distress? It was a look Steve wore frequently enough that sometimes Bucky thought it was just the default. “I just wondered.”

“After” was a concept Bucky didn’t let himself think about. He didn’t even know if there _was_ an after, and trapped in a basement, hope seemed more ephemeral than ever. Steve was watching him though. He had to say something. “I don’t even know what home is anymore, pal.”

Steve hummed a quiet sort of acknowledgment. Bucky wasn’t certain of the precise translation, but he was pretty sure that meant Steve was about five seconds away from making Bucky’s problem his problem. The thing was, they had plenty of trouble individually without _sharing_ it around on top of it all. Determined not to let Steve press the issue, Bucky volleyed back. “What are you going to do?”

Bucky could hear the way Steve’s breath caught in his throat, just so. It would have been satisfying to have caught the guy off guard if it didn’t leave Bucky feeling guilty, even before Steve replied. “I think we both know the answer.”

It was such an impulsive sentiment, Bucky barely thought at all. Maybe if he’d considered, it might have come out differently, but all he knew in the moment was that he didn’t want Steve’s freedom at his mercy any more than he’d wanted his freedom at Steve’s. “I don’t think that’s true. As far as the cops are concerned, all they’re getting from me is that you saved my life. Twice, I think..”

If the suggestion made Steve happy, he certainly didn’t show it. The frown he’d been sporting only deepened. “I’m not holding you to that.”

That particular outburst was the closest thing to a concession Bucky had made, and wasn’t it just like Steve to give him an out anyway? Steve was something else, honestly, and without a reason to hate him, it was hard not to like the guy. The temptation to insist was there, a desperate need for Steve to believe him that sat in an uncomfortable knot in Bucky’s belly. Maybe that was the kindness Bucky could offer, when it came down to it, denying his own urge to coax Steve into some kind of affirmation. Bucky sat with his discomfort, nudging Steve’s foot with his. “Suit yourself.”

\----------

Bucky had stretched out on one of the cots like a corpse in a coffin, probably because it was the least painful way to exist while his body mended from the accident. Steve watched him doze for a little while before boredom and curiosity got the better of him. Steve had just opened the first one when Bucky mumbled behind him, “What on earth are you doing?”

Steve smiled over his shoulder. “You asked all those questions about Nat, but you didn’t ask the most important question.”

“Which is?” Bucky asked, watching Steve, but not bothering to sit up just yet. 

“How long did she really think we were going to hang out down here before we started going through her stuff.” Steve ignored Bucky’s chagrined expression and went back to it. 

“She’s going to kill us. Not being dead is kind of the point of being down here. Don’t ruin that.” From the corner of his eye, Steve could see Bucky sit up and shake his head. It didn’t stop Steve from pulling books and a pack of playing cards out of the box. 

“Nah. See, the thing about Natasha is she knows how people are. She wouldn’t leave people alone with anything she had some expectation of privacy about.” Steve pulled out a long, thin box, a familiar one at that. The corners of the box lid were nearly worn through from all the times he’d opened and closed it. 

“Do you play chess?” Bucky's brows furrowed as he peered at what Steve was holding.

Steve rubbed sheepishly at the back of his head, but he did answer. “I was in chess club.”

It was very definitely the worst thing to admit, because Bucky’s face lit up in a gleeful smile. “Seriously?”

“What? It's a strategy game,” Steve protested, scowling theatrically at Bucky. This was definitely a mistake.

“Nothing. I just didn't know you were a nerd on top of everything else,” Bucky teased and… had they really graduated to teasing? Steve wasn’t sure when that had happened, but here they were. 

“What? Afraid I'm going to beat you?” Steve shot back, and decided that teasing or not, this was much better than the two of them sitting in depressed silence. 

Bucky's swung his legs around so that he could put his feet on the floor. “Oh no. I'm gonna kick your ass, but you're still a nerd.”

“We’ll see about that.” Steve countered as he set the case on the empty space of Bucky’s cot like he thought they were going to somehow play there. It took him a moment to notice Bucky’s incredulous look. “What?”

“I’m just waiting for you to figure out that setting up on a bedspread is a terrible idea,” Bucky replied mildly. 

“So, about like usual.” Steve agreed, turning away to assess the rest of the room. Eventually, he got up and grabbed the now mostly empty box. It was large enough to serve as a table, so he sat it down in front of Bucky and dragged his own cot a little closer. 

“Well, they’re not all bad ideas,” Bucky offered up, waving at the makeshift table. “This one is is great.”

“You say that like you think you’re going to win.” Steve laid out the board, holding out the lid full of pieces so that Bucky could choose a color. 

Bucky’s hand hovered over the pieces for a few seconds before he plucked the black queen from the box. “I say that like someone who _knows_ I’m going to win.”

“Yeah, we’ll see.” Steve laughed in spite of himself, in spite of everything. He set out his pieces while Bucky lined up pawns on his end of the board. Once they were done, Steve brought the pawn in front of his king forward two spaces.

“Ooh, pawn to e4, because that’s not practically every chess opening ever.” Bucky grinned and answered in kind. “They teach you that in chess club?”

“Are you gonna be like this the whole game?” Steve asked, but smiling came with surprising ease, and since it definitely wasn’t the circumstances, he had to assume it was the company.

Bucky shrugged, watching Steve make his next move. “Probably just until I beat you.”

“This is the part where I probably should have asked if you played, isn’t it?” Steve asked, mentally kicking himself for not thinking to do so. It wasn’t that it changed anything, but he barely knew a thing about who Bucky was, and he _wanted_ to.

“Why? Were you hoping for an easy win?” Bucky’s gaze was sharp on the board, not bothering to even glance Steve’s way. “I guess you’re out of luck.”

“Given our current circumstances, I already knew that.” Steve was sorry the moment he said it, and wished he could gather the words back into his mouth. The mood might have fallen at that particular reminder, but Bucky huffed out a laugh and Steve followed suit, and the careful balance they were keeping remained. 

It wasn’t that Steve was bad at this by any means. He was very good, if a little rusty, but he was also every bit as orthodox as his opening suggested. Bucky, on the other hand, seemed to play the way he tackled every threat Steve had ever seen him encounter, sharp edged and giving no quarter. Steve lost his king’s pawn three turns in, and one of his knights the turn after. He kept resolving to change his strategy, but his mind was hopelessly elsewhere, marveling at how lively Bucky was, even run down and hopeless. He didn’t realize he was staring right through Bucky until a voice reached his ears. “Is this all you’ve got? What happened to chess club?”

“... What?” Steve abruptly looked, _really_ looked at Bucky. Even in the basement lighting, Bucky had to be able to see the warm blush that blossomed across Steve’s cheeks. “Sorry. I got distracted.”

“By how badly you’re playing?” Bucky egged on, grinning at Steve. “You keep on like that and I’m gonna end up with all your pieces.”

Well, if it was going to be like _that_. Banter, Steve could work with. He shook it off his embarrassment as an impish smile creased his lips. “Is that a challenge?”

Bucky waited for Steve to make his move and then captured one of his bishops. “Nope. Pretty sure it’s a fact.”

Steve matched Bucky’s strategy better after that., though it was far too late to wrangle an easy victory for his efforts. They chased each other across the board until it was all but empty and neither of them could possibly win. No sooner had Steve’s last pawn reached the other side of the board, than Bucky captured it. A sly smile tugged at the corner of Bucky’s mouth as he nudged at Steve’s king, a lonesome figure at the far end of the board. “I guess that’s the game.”

“Looks like we’re pretty well matched,” Steve replied agreeably. 

“This time maybe,” Bucky countered, a touch softer than before. “While you were daydreaming, I was learning all your moves.”

Steve’s eyes widened in surprise, his tongue thick in his throat. Surely Bucky wasn’t flirting, only it very much sounded like it, and Steve’s stomach quivered in anticipating of something he didn’t remotely deserve. He almost said something, but by the time he worked out what, Bucky was already clearing the air. “Don’t look at me like that. Your _chess_ moves.”

_Oh_. It made more sense. They might not be enemies, but any affection Steve had for Bucky was probably overshadowed by the fact that Steve had also kidnapped him. It was best to sweep those particular daydreams aside. Steve began gathering up his pieces to set the board. “Best two out of three?”

\----------

It wasn’t exactly the kind of life a person settled into, trying to stay a step ahead of the people who meant to kill you. There was a certain sort of romance though, to running away with someone else. They never stayed anywhere more than a night, and really, Steve was the only constant in Bucky’s life. That should have been terrible, Bucky was pretty sure, but it seemed less so every day. 

For all her feigned disinterest in their situation, Natasha was every bit the ally Steve had claimed she would be, keeping them a step ahead of the people who meant to harm them. Of course, that meant constantly moving and absurdly varied accommodations, but Bucky was long past complaining about anywhere if it meant they were alive. 

Currently, anywhere was the top floor of a building undergoing renovation. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was defensible and had plenty of exits. Even better, Steve had found the access hatch to the rooftop, and he’d seemed so happy at the prospect of eating their Chinese takeout outside that Bucky hadn’t had the heart to even consider protesting. 

\------

They sat side by side with their backs against the barrier around the roof of the building. The view of the city was entirely blocked like this, but that was better, as far as Bucky was concerned. There were just the stars overhead and for a little while, maybe he could pretend the rest of the world has just dropped away.

“I’m sorry.” Steve broke the silence as Bucky crunched the last bit of an eggroll between his teeth. Bucky glanced over at Steve, his features soft in the moonlight, but Steve wasn’t looking at him. 

Bucky pulled over what to say to that, because it wasn’t the first time Steve had said it. Really, Bucky had thought they’d been over every iteration of this conversation already, but they were circling back again and it felt… different, important somehow. Acutely aware of how close they were, Bucky inclined his head. “Sorry for what?”

Steve huffed out something that might have been a laugh as he picked at his chow mein. “I mean, did you want the whole list?”

In the beginning, Bucky had assumed that apologizing was a thing Steve did to make himself feel better, except that it clearly didn’t. They’d had such a good night in as much as things could ever be good, and Bucky very much wanted to hang on to that. He held out the box of eggrolls to Steve like an olive branch, though they hadn’t needed one in ages. “If you keep moping about things I’ve already forgiven you for, I’m going to have start keeping a squirt gun handy to, I don’t know, train you out of it or something.”

Steve had started to reach for one of the egg rolls, but he froze as he listened to Bucky. “How can you possibly? I mean, whatever good intentions I had, what I did was-”

Bucky cut him off before he could get any further down that road. “Was stupid. _Really_ stupid. But even if you didn’t mean to, you probably saved my life. Then, you did it again and you definitely meant to that time, and that was stupid too, by the way. I’m starting to think you were dropped on your head a lot as a kid or something because you make really terrible life choices _all_ the damned time.”

Finally, _finally_ , Steve broke a smile, shaking his head as he plucked an egg roll out of the box. “Are you trying to say something about me?”

“Yeah. You’re an idiot. Was that not obvious?” Bucky retorted between bites of beef and broccoli. “But if actions are more important than intentions, then I think every day since you helped me get out of there counts for _something_.”

“What else was I supposed to do?” Steve asked. There was a hushed quality to Steve’s voice, the way people talk in churches and libraries, and even though they were near enough that he could hear just fine, something about it had Bucky leaning in closer. “I got into this mess because I was trying to help people who weren’t in a place to help themselves. I’m not gonna just pick and choose when that’s the right thing to do.”

“I could have gotten out of there on my own,” Bucky insisted, though they both knew better. 

A small smile flitted across Steve’s lips. “Bucky. You were in a ditch. _Unconscious_.”

The passage of even a little bit of time made the memory less frightening than it had once been. The danger they were in was still real, but up here under the stars, it felt very far away. “I would have woken up eventually.”

“Yeah, in a wrecked car in a ditch,” Steve agreed, shaking his head as Bucky set aside his empty take out container and through the bag their dinner had come in.

“Yeah, yeah. Shut up and take your fortune cookie,” Bucky grumbled goodnaturedly, holding both of the cookies out to Steve. After a moment’s deliberation, Steve plucked one of them out of Bucky’s hand. 

Bucky had always sort of liked fortune cookies, even if they were possibly the most American part of Americanized Chinese food. He took his out of the wrapper, immediately splitting it in half to remove the fortune. Pulling the slip free, he was just about to take a bite when Steve asked, “What’s yours say?”

“There is a prospect of happiness ahead for you,” Bucky read off the little paper slip and made a face. “Well, clearly this fortunate cookie isn’t aware of my life right now.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Just because things are rough doesn’t mean you can’t be happy too,” Steve pointed out between bites of fortune cookie. 

Bucky snorted and tipped his head back, briefly letting his eyes close. “I think the attempted murder thing tends to overshadow my unending love of egg rolls and fortune cookies.”

“No, I know. Just…” Steve started, but Bucky held up a hand to cut him off. 

“It’s fine. I know what you meant,” he explained, waving vaguely towards Steve. “What’s yours say?”

“One always regrets that they could have done.” Steve chuckled as he read it. “That was almost a sentence.”

“Almost,” Bucky agreed.

For a little while they sat in comfortable silence, watching the stars overhead as what was left of their takeout went cold. It was comfortable, the two of them sitting shoulder to shoulder. Bucky shooed away the stray, uninvited thought that he was so close he could tip his head if he wanted to, and lean on Steve. It might even be nice, but to do so would also own up to something he was trying very hard to tamp down. 

“I kind of regret not just going with you at the hotel,” Steve admitted. His tone was light, but he’d frozen next to Bucky aside from the thumb he kept dragging over his fortune. “It’s hard not to wonder how things might have been different.”

“Wait. Is this confession time? No one told me,” Bucky retorted as he tried to parse what Steve was saying. He’d been so caught up in his own fledgling crush, it had never even occurred to him that the feeling might be mutual. He still wasn’t quite sure. “I mean, things would probably be different in that someone else would have gotten to me instead.”

“I don’t know. You’re pretty clever. I’m pretty sure I only got to you out of dumb luck,” Steve conceded.

Bucky hummed, trying to remember what had even happened. It felt like a lifetime ago. “I just wanted to believe you were interested in me.”

“I am. Was. I-” Bucky could hear Steve’s teeth click together as he briskly closed his mouth. Bucky’s heart hammered in his chest, and when he turned his head, Steve had squeezed his eyes shut like he was trying very hard to melt through the concrete. “I figured you knew. Subterfuge isn’t exactly my strong suit.”

“I kind of assumed I was just a target,” Bucky heard himself say before he’d really thought it through. For all he’d joked about confessions, it was a very all the cards on the table thing to say. His throat felt like he’d just swallowed an entire bottle of honey as he waited for Steve, who looked stricken by the suggestion. 

“Well, yes, but I’m not blind,” Steve said sheepishly. When Bucky frowned, Steve rubbed anxiously at the back of his neck, scooting to put a little bit of space between them. “Not just that, of course. You were entirely different from what I’d expected.”

Steve trailed off, and Bucky wasn’t quite sure where to pick up. When he put it like that, it made sense. Bucky was easy on the eyes. He knew that. Bucky couldn’t take Steve acknowledging that he’d been attractive as Steve being attracted to him in any meaningful way. 

When Bucky didn’t say anything, Steve seemed to take it as a cue to keep talking. “That sounds awful, all… window dressing. What I was trying to get at is that maybe it started there, but you are the most _remarkable_ person I’ve ever met.”

“Did you just call my face window dressing?” Bucky asked, and judging from the way Steve groaned and dragged his palm over his own features, that was precisely what had happened. For a moment, Bucky was tempted to hang onto that because it was easier to to stick to the levity of the situation than to think about what it _meant_. He smiled anyway, trying to dispel the way Steve looked like he wanted to disappear. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said. This isn’t fair at all.” Steve’s words tumbled over each other, and somehow, that was more real than anything else. He wouldn’t have been apologizing if he didn’t feel like he’d done something wrong, which meant…

Bucky swallowed thickly, to make his mouth form into words. It was a perfect opening to admit what he’d been thinking for a while, but all that came out is, “It’s not a problem. It’s _fine_.”

It wasn’t what he meant to say, but even as Bucky’s stomach twisted in knots, he could see the way Steve relaxed. Sort of. “I’m not asking for anything. I wouldn’t-”

When Bucky couldn’t string together the words he wanted to, his body picked up the slack, shuffling onto his knees to lean in as surely as if Steve had grabbed his shoulders and pulled. The motion left them almost nose to nose. Before Steve could finish, Bucky tilted his head forward, his mouth brushing over Steve’s in a quick, impulsive kiss. 

The kiss barely even qualified as such, as fleeting as it was, but it did the trick. Steve was so startled, he never quite finished whatever it was he meant to say, and Bucky made a point to fill in the empty space before he could try again. “Stop. I get it, but _stop_.”

They were still so close, Bucky could hear the faint little shudder in Steve’s breathing. He sat still, close but very clearly not touching Bucky. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, like he was afraid someone else would hear. “What I did… Bucky, I took away any kind of free will you had back there.”

“Yup. It was a shitty thing to do, and then you made up for it.” Bucky’s tongue darted out to lick his lips as he gathered his thoughts. He sat back enough that Steve would have to move to close the gap between them. “So, if it’s not something you want, that’s okay, but if you’re taking the choice away from me out of some need to… to _punish_ yourself, then fuck you.”

Steve’s eyes went wide, and for a moment, the only sound was the wind blowing over the rooftop. Whatever internal debate he was having, he eventually conceded with a quiet sigh. “I just couldn’t stomach the idea that you might be doing me a favor.”

Bucky laughed before he could stop himself, helpless and drawn out. As far as Bucky was concerned, it was the dumbest conclusion Steve could have drawn, but it was also a rather endearing hangup to have all things considered. “Steve. _Seriously_. I haven’t done you a favor in the entire time we’ve known each other. Why on earth would you think this was the thing I’d start with?”

When Bucky had laughed, Steve’s expression had gone all serious and frowning, though it softened up immediately at the explanation. He didn’t say anything, not a word, but he reached out, but where Bucky went, Steve followed. Reaching out, Steve cradled Bucky’s cheek in his palm, sucking in a breath that let out all at once, warm across Bucky’s lips. 

“Are you gonna just stare at me all night?” Bucky asked when Steve didn’t come any closer. 

“I mean, it’s a nice view,” Steve conceded, his mouth pulled up at one corner. Bucky was acutely aware of the tender drag of Steve’s thumb along his cheekbone. It was a tiny, insignificant gesture, and unspeakably nice in comparison to everything else his life had been as of late. 

Unspeakably nice did nothing to stop the wicked smile that creased Bucky’s lips. “Yeah, I dunno. Speak for yourself.” 

“I guess you shouldn’t have to look if it’s that awful,” Steve murmured, which was just as good as the theatrics Bucky had expected. It was better even, because it was punctuated by Steve’s plush lips brushing slow and lingering over his. The sensation was soft but distinct, and still a silent question despite all of Bucky’s egging him on. 

That was alright, though. More than alright, really. Bucky sank into into, warmth blooming in his chest at the careful way that Steve gave without really demanding anything in return. 

The most shocking thing, all considered, was how satisfying it was to be right where they were doing exactly what they were doing. Bucky’s hands could have strayed beneath the hem of Steve’s shirt, could have rid him of it entirely, and he knew Steve wasn’t likely to protest. All Bucky really wanted in the moment though, was to be closer. 

Closer was shuffling a little bit awkwardly into Steve’s lap. It was hooking an arm between Steve’s shoulders and the rough concrete wall, ignoring the slight scrape against his skin. It was smiling into their kisses at the happy little sigh he got for his efforts when he buried the fingers of his other hand in Steve’s hair. 

Bucky could hardly imagine how things would have gone if Steve had just come back to his room at the bar. Steve’s mannerisms were so incongruous with the fleeting satisfaction of a one night stand. He was tentative every step of the way, from the worshipful way his lips parted in invitation to the feather light touch of his palm skimming between Bucky’s shoulder blades. 

Steve gave so easily that Bucky took practically on instinct without ever really thinking on what he was doing. When Steve opened his mouth, Bucky dipped his tongue inside, and hardly noticed the quiet whimper it pulled from one of them. When Steve’s head drooped subtly to one side, Bucky followed the line of his lips and drifted past Steve’s beard to mouth at his throat. 

The tight, reflexive curl of Steve’s fingers in the back of Bucky’s shirt brought him back, even though the simplest thing would have been to keep going. He wanted to keep going, but… later. There would be later. For now, he pressed one last kiss to the side of Steve’s neck and relaxed. A faint smile creased his lips when Steve turned his head, pressing a kiss to Bucky’s temple, as tender and unassuming now as he’d been from the start. With the empty rooftop around them and the night sky overhead, Bucky settled into Steve’s embrace like it was the safest place he’d ever been. 


	7. Chapter 7

There could never be anything exactly good about living on the run, but Bucky made it better. They found each other by inches, the one part of their lives that wasn’t harried or urgent. They didn’t tumble right into bed together, but they gravitated closer, their uneasy companionship blossoming into something else entirely. 

Steve still didn’t have the faintest idea what might come after, and so Natasha’s call was as much nerve wracking as happy. He wouldn’t ask Bucky to stay, wouldn’t expect any more of Bucky’s life than he’d already been given. Bucky had a whole existence outside of this mess and deserved chance to get back to it, but there was no place for Steve there. 

“I imagine you’ll be happy to hear I connected your dots for you,” Natasha’s voice came smooth, almost bored-sounding, through the SUV’s speakers. Bucky’s hand had resting idly over Steve’s on the gear shift in a quietly affectionate gesture, their fingers lazily laced together, and he squeezed a little as they listened. “I took the liberty of sending an anonymous tip to the officers investigating the kidnapping case.”

Bucky inhaled sharply next to Steve. “So, it’s over?”

“Not quite, but almost. I’d give the police another few days to verify the information before you go turning up on their doorstep, James.” 

“A few days is hardly a drop in the bucket,” Bucky murmured. “Thank you so much for everything.”

“Just lay low.” 

With that, the phone call disconnected, leaving Bucky and Steve alone as Steve pulled off the highway to get gas. Whatever loss might be coming, Steve could only ever be happy for what this meant for Bucky. “We did it.”

“Well, Natasha did it. We just stayed out of trouble,” Bucky pointed out. Steve shook his head and kept driving in search of a place to fill the nearly empty gas tank.

They didn’t have to go far down the road. It was a typical sort of off the highway affair, a street lined with fast food and gas stations. Steve pulled into one of the stations, parking alongside a gas pump at a place wedged in between two burger joints. 

“I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” Bucky commented from the passenger seat as Steve got out of the SUV.

“If only there were somewhere we could do something about that.” Steve teased. Maybe this would be over soon, but right now, he sort of loved this… whatever it was between them.

Bucky made a face. “You’re the worst.”

Steve hid a smile as he turned away to start the gas pump. “Seriously though. Why don’t you get lunch while I fill up the tank, and then we can be on our way?”

It was all the encouragement Bucky needed, apparently, to get Steve’s order and wander off to the restaurant next door. Steve watched him go while waiting for the tank to fill. 

When it came down to it, Steve didn’t want it to be over. That was maybe too broad. Steve very much wanted the trying not to die part to end, but _Bucky_ … Bucky was something else entirely, and Steve felt a little bit ill at the idea of letting go. 

The thought was a useless one, and only served to distract him from his surroundings. He realized the danger he was in far too late, when the SUV was boxed in. It was an easy thing to miss, the way they parked like any other customers, but the man who got out of the van in front of the SUV was definitely there for them. 

“You’re a hard man to find, Steve,” Brock said, casually as anything. Even dressed to be out in the open he was dangerous looking, and didn’t give Steve a chance to reply. “Where’s our friend?”

Steve spared a glance at the burger joint, but saw no sign of Bucky. There was a line wrapped around the building, and Steve just hoped the delay would be long enough, because the woman parked behind him was out of the car too, and he couldn’t protect Bucky from any of this. He’d never been a good liar, but he gave it his best shot. “He left the first chance he got and I can't say I blame him. Why on earth would he want to pal around with the guy who kidnapped him?”

It sounded false to Steve's ears, but it was plausible enough that they bought it. Brock slid open the side door of the windowless black van. From where Steve stood, he could see enough to know Brock hadn’t come alone, which was likely the point. “We'll find him. Now get in.”

The guns, both of them, were in the car, and Steve debated if he was willing to gamble on being fast enough to grab one and clear a way out before they got to him. He'd seen the glint of metal under the woman's leather jacket and didn't like his chances. Even worse, if he fought back and things dragged out, if Bucky came back before Brock and his goons were gone, every sacrifice they'd made along the way would be for naught.

Steve knew, he _knew_ it was a one way trip if he got in the van, but it was Bucky's fate that made up his mind. He didn't fight, instead trying to get them out of the parking lot as quickly as possible. Holding his hands up in surrender, he took a step forward and then another, and hoped Bucky would forgive him for leaving in the end. The keys were still in the SUV, so Bucky wasn’t stranded and that would have to be enough. 

There was no way to look back at the burger place without drawing attention, so Steve just let them hustle him along into the van and hoped Bucky would be delayed a few moments more. He was restrained before he could even think about getting away, and had just enough sense to clench his fists so that it was harder to tighten the zip tie. In the briefest flash of good fortune, Brock’s team seemed in too much of a hurry to notice what he’d done. 

They yanked a bag over his head to blind him to where they were going. Maybe that was fitting after having gone into this entire ordeal blind in more metaphorical ways. He had started this though, and now, one way or another, Steve meant to finish it. 

\----------

Bucky trotted back down the grassy embankment between the burger place and the gas station where the SUV was parked, the driver side door still open. Was Steve still seriously getting gas? Maybe he’d gone inside for a drink or something first. 

“You would not believe the wait over there. I’m pretty sure the woman in front of me was ordering for an entire office building or something because-” Bucky rattled off as he climbed back in the passenger seat with their bag of food. He rolled down the back window to talk to Steve through it, but when Bucky turned around, no one was there. “...Steve?”

Steve had left the door open and the key in the ignition like he wanted the car to get stolen, which was just about ridiculous. Clearly, he was lacking in any sense of self preservation at all, which Bucky planned to remind him of for the hundredth time whenever he came back from inside the gas station. 

Only a minute passed, and then another, and there was no sign of him at all. It didn’t mean anything, of course, but Bucky pulled the key out of the ignition and made a beeline across the parking lot to the convenience store inside. 

The inside of the gas station consisted of a check out counter and five aisles, and Steve didn’t appear to be in any of them. The attendant leaned on the counter between two registers, barely acknowledging Bucky’s presence until he came to stand in front of the guy. “I’m traveling with someone. Have you seen him? Tall guy, broad shoulders, kinda shaggy.”

The attendant shook his head, and Bucky’s blood was already running cold before the guy gave him the worst possible answer. “No one like that’s been in here.”

“Could I borrow your phone?” Bucky asked immediately. He didn’t have much hope for an easy explanation, but it was something to focus on before he resorted to outright panic. He’d long since committed the number for Steve’s burner phone to memory just in case. When the attendant handed over the phone, Bucky immediately dialed only to listen to it ring and ring and ring. 

There had been a time once when Bucky could have left, when Steve was no more than a companion of circumstance, but it hadn’t been true in a while. Bucky had the things he absolutely needed to keep going. He had the keys and a full gas tank, but Bucky never so much as entertained the notion of going on without him. Steve had never once left him when he needed help, and now it was Bucky’s turn to return the favor. 

“Okay, he can’t have just disappeared. Did you see _anything_?” Bucky asked as he offered back the phone. “There are cameras out there, right?”

“Yeah, but…” The attendant paused, staring out the window at the SUV. “They don’t cover that part of the lot all that well.”

“Could I look anyway?” Bucky pressed, coaching his mouth into a charming smile. 

“I can’t let you behind the counter,” the attendant replied flatly. “Do you wanna call the cops or somethin’?”

Bucky could only hope the way he froze wasn’t too visible. Cops were absolutely the last thing he needed right now. He shook his head and regrouped, determined to put his upbringing to use. Physically, he didn’t stand much of a chance, but people? People, he could handle. “No, no. I mean, we were on the road for so long, I imagine he went for a walk to stretch his legs. I was just hoping the camera could tell me which way he went.”

The guy’s face scrunched up in thought, and he frowned at Bucky from behind the counter, but eventually he gave in. Just as Bucky made like he planned to walk out of the gas station, he piped up, “I can’t let you behind the counter, but I’ll take a look. Just… stay there, would you?”

Bucky stayed exactly where the attendant left him, and every second he waited felt more perilous than the last. Steve was probably in trouble, could be dying for all Bucky knew, but he didn’t even know where to start looking. The attendant wasn’t gone for more than a few minutes, and Bucky tried not to imagine the worst.

“Couldn’t see anything,” the attendant explained as he emerged from the back room. He looked around like he was expecting Bucky to have stolen something in his absence and seemed pleased that Bucky was still right where he’d left him. “A van, one of those big utility deals pulled up for a few minutes, but that’s it.”

It wasn’t the police, then. Bucky wanted to be relieved by that, except the cops might have let Steve go in the end, and the alternative meant he was running out of precious time. It also meant he was in way, _way_ over his head. 

“You sure you don’t want to call the cops or someone?” the attendant asked when Bucky didn’t say anything. Not the cops, Bucky quickly decided. They’d never find Steve in time, but there was someone else who could probably help him. It wasn’t a call he wanted to have inside the gas station though. 

“No, no. I think I know where he went,” Bucky lied, contorting his facial muscles into the right shape to suggest he was completely at ease. Before the attendant could say anything further, he was out the door. 

Much to Bucky’s relief, what might have been the last payphone in existence was outside, bolted into the bricks of the gas station’s outer wall. There was one other number Bucky had memorized, so he dug a couple of quarters out of his pocket and dialed. 

The phone rang three times before a carefully measured voice answered. “Hello?”

“Please, Natasha. I need your help,” Bucky started, and before he knew it, he was rattling off the whole story at a rapid fire pace. He didn’t even hear her saying his name in an effort to cut in.

“ _Bucky_.” Natasha only raised her voice a fraction, but the word was sharp and crisp through the phone. Coupled with the fact that she’d never called him that, Bucky finally went silent. Two seconds ticked by before she finished. “If you want me to help you, I have to be able to understand you. Slow _down_.”

Right. Of course. Bucky took a breath and tried again, walking Natasha through what he knew of the situation. He answered her questions as he went, and when he got to the part about having tried to call Steve, Bucky paused. “Wait. Can you track his phone?”

“The point of changing phones was to prevent anyone finding you boys that way,” Natasha replied smoothly, sounding as unruffled as ever. Bucky envied her that because just then his stomach felt like he’d swallowed a bag of rocks. 

“Yeah, but can you do it?” Bucky asked again. If he’d learned anything, it was never to underestimate what she was capable of. 

“Of course I can. Now, give me a minute and just breathe.” The line was silent after that and Bucky paced back and forth as far as the short phone cord would let him. It dispelled exactly none of the tension, like springs with barely enough pressure to hold them back. He was exposed where he stood if anyone bothered to come back looking for him, but Bucky wasn’t thinking about that. All he could think about was that if he didn’t hurry, they were going to be too late. 

“There’s a warehouse about fifteen miles away.” Natasha broke the silence as if there had never been any break in their conversation at all. “They’ll have taken him there.”

“Fucking hell. Why is it always a warehouse?” Bucky squeezed the phone in his hand until the plastic was digging into his palm. 

“Probably something to do with the remote location and lack of windows.” Natasha sounded completely unconcerned, though Bucky knew she _had_ to be worried about Steve’s safety. 

“Okay. Okay, warehouse. So, now what?” Bucky had finally stopped pacing, but he shuffled where he stood, waiting for what he already knew was coming. 

Natasha sighed, but she indulged him anyway. “Now, you go get him back.”

Bucky’s heart thumped in his chest as he tried to turn the idea over in his head. He knew his way around a fundraising dinner, but he didn’t know the first thing about rescuing someone from armed assailants. There were weapons in the car, but he’d never shot a gun in his life, and he really hadn’t planned on starting now. “I don’t think I’m going to be enough, Natasha. I’ve never even been in a fistfight.”

“The way Steve tells it, I think you’re going to be just fine. And James, you’re not on your own with this.” Bucky could hear the slightest inflection in Natasha’s tone, something soft around the edges that soothed his frazzled nerves a little. “I’m going to give you directions, and then you’re going to follow them. Understood?”

“Understood,” Bucky said immediately, because there was never any arguing with Natasha anyway. 

“Good. Now here is what you’re going to do…”

\----------

For a little while, Steve could hear nothing but the rumble of tires over a stretch of highway. Someone’s boot pressed into his back, the unforgiving rubber squarely between his shoulder blades. There were two of them, if the glimpse he’d caught before the bag had been pulled over his head. They were vaguely familiar faces, though he didn’t recall their names. How they’d betrayed his trust, the whole group of them, didn’t sting the way he expected it to. That didn’t hurt nearly so much as discovering he’d nearly helped them do something terrible. 

Steve stayed put, not because he had any intention of going down easy, but because he knew he’d likely only get one shot. The low rumble of traffic around them suggested they were on a highway, and surrounded by innocent people wasn’t the place he planned to spend that one chance. 

Somewhere up front, there was the familiar chirrup of Brock’s phone, muffled a little through the thick fabric around his head. Whoever was on the other end, Brock didn’t bother with a greeting. “Give me some good news.”

From the sound of it, they didn’t have good news. “What do you mean you _lost_ him? He could put every one of us away if he goes to the cops.”

Steve’s heart thudded in his chest. Had they discovered his ruse? Whatever the case, Bucky had gotten away, and Steve held onto that. Bucky would only need to stay ahead of them a little bit longer. 

“I don’t care where the fucking phone was. _Find_ him,” Brock growled from the driver’s seat, and for a second Steve was terribly glad for the bag on his head. It hid his broad, relieved smile at the realization that they had taken Natasha’s bait. They had to have caught Steve and assumed the signal was Bucky far away in Texas. It was maybe the second best news Steve had heard all day. With any luck, any at all, it would be too late by the time they realized their mistake. 

Taking refuge in the certainty that they didn’t have Bucky, Steve lay still and waited for the opportunity to escape. The van veered off the highway, and soon the low rumble of tires over well kept asphalt gave way to a rougher sound. It wasn’t gravel, Steve didn’t think, but the noise was uneven, as if in disrepair. They were somewhere out of the way, Steve expected, not that the revelation did him much good where he was. 

Soon enough, they came to a stop. Steve heard the sliding door of the van open, and then he was being pushed out. They’d be paying too much attention to him now, so Steve allowed himself to be dragged to his feet and hauled across pavement, biding his time all the while.

Steve counted the steps inside from behind the bag over his head. He’d probably be leaving in a hurry if he got out at all. It was 247 from the door and then they turned left. Another 72 and then right. As they walked, Steve did his best to commit the floor plan to memory. 

He was so engrossed in the task, Steve was almost surprised when they came to a stop. The bag was abruptly tugged off his head, leaving Steve greedily sucking in the first breath he’d had in a while that wasn’t stifled by thick fabric. For a moment, all Steve could do was breathe. 

“I gotta hand it to you for holding out so long. I thought for sure you two were going to go to the cops before I could get to you,” Brock mused. He stood just a few feet from Steve, an insufferable smirk gracing his lips. Abruptly, he waved off the two people holding Steve. “It’s fine. This is between him and me.”

It was exactly the opening Steve needed, so he leaned into it, trying to draw out the conversation while he got his bearings. “You know that wasn’t an option.”

“Well… it _was_ ,” Brock countered, drawing out the last word and leaning in like he was telling Steve a secret. “I just don’t imagine it would’ve worked out too well for you.” 

“I’d have managed,” Steve argued before he could help himself. He was immediately sorry he’d said anything, because Brock grabbed onto it like a dog with a bone and pulled. 

“So, why didn’t you?” Brock watched him and Steve tried not to freeze while he thought of an answer that would make sense without giving away his lie about Bucky going off on his own. He’d never been much of a liar. Already, he could feel it unraveling. 

“It didn’t have to be like this.” Steve said instead, baiting instead of answering the question. He squared his shoulders as he faced Brock, carefully masking that he was trying to ease one of his hands free of the zip tie. 

“Oh, that’s just too good.” Brock huffed out a derisive laugh and shook his head. “Did you think the senator bought us out mid-mission or something? It was _always_ going to be like this.”

He’d suspected that was the truth of it, of course, but somehow the reality still hit him like he’d been kicked in the ribs. He’d bought it, all of Brock’s wheedling about the greater good and the importance of taking action while they still could. Bucky had been Steve’s mission. Steve had just never once realized that he had been Brock’s. Steve was seething, but he swallowed it down, and let it bubble in his chest as he kept trying to get loose. “And if I hadn’t bought your bullshit?”

Brock lifted an eyebrow at Steve and sneered. “You think there was ever a chance you weren’t going to buy it? I made it up just for you.”

That was about the time the widest part of his hand finally got through the ring of plastic around his wrists. Brock was just going for his gun and Steve lunged at him, buoyed by adrenaline. The force of it was enough to send them both tumbling to the concrete floor. 

If it had just been the two of them, if it had been a fair fight, Steve knew he could have won. It was just that Brock had never fought fair. The moment he was on the losing end of Steve’s fury, he called for backup. 

The altercation was over almost before it started, as two of Brock’s goons grabbed Steve’s biceps and yanked him back. He struggled in their grip as they pulled him off Brock and forced him to his knees, but three on one was no contest at all. It was even less so when Brock rolled to his feet. Panting and baring his teeth, Brock kicked Steve in the belly. 

“No hard feelings, pal, but that’s the last time I let you punch me.” Brock leveled his gun at Steve’s head and there was blood between his teeth as he smiled a vicious, toothy grin. There was no way out, Steve knew, but he looked Brock in the eye, refusing to close his eyes. 

The seconds ticked by and the shot Steve expected didn’t come. Brock pulled the hammer back, but then he turned his head, looking somewhere behind Steve. “Nice of you to join us.”


	8. Chapter 8

The plan was simple, in as much as anything was ever simple for Bucky these days. Stay out of sight, wait for backup, make sure said backup knew Steve was one of the good guys. It was bound to get a little complicated while agencies fought over jurisdiction, but complicated was miles better than dead. 

The building Brock had taken Steve to didn’t seem like much of a warehouse after all. It had probably been a bustling factory once, though its sprawling parking lot only had four cars in it now aside from the SUV Bucky had been driving. He cursed under his breath as he took in the expansive building. It was going to take forever to find them in there. 

He had never shot a gun in his life, but _four cars_ was motivation enough to grab the pistol Steve had in the glove box. There was no sign of the emergency services Natasha had promised to call, so after a moment, Bucky crept around the vehicles to the door and pulled the handle. The door opened with the insistent creak of a heavy chunk of metal on rusty hinges, but the sound was drowned out in a low, constant rumble Bucky thought might have been a generator. 

Not that the generator was doing a whole lot of good. In what was either the best or worst luck Bucky had had all day, only the emergency lights were on in the parts of the facility he could see. It cast strange shadows and limited how far Bucky could see, but it also made following Natasha’s direction to stay out of sight a great deal easier. 

Bucky picked his way through the factory with great care, keeping to the shadows and out of the weak, eerie light. His footfalls were soft shuffles against the concrete flooring, but, caught up in his worries about being found, they sounded deafening to Bucky’s ears. With each step further into the factory, he was more certain someone was going to notice him, but only silent machinery witnessed his passing through. 

Bucky’s luck ran out in the short hallway between the room he’d first entered and the next. Bucky spotted the other guy first and had just enough time to duck back around the corner. There was no reaching anything to properly hide behind though, and aside from the gun - that he had no intention of shooting if he didn’t have to - he was unarmed. Bucky held his breath and pressed his back to the wall. 

Bucky could just hear the shuffle of someone’s feet over the soft generator hum. He saw their shadow first, long and barely darker than the floor under their feet. Hardly daring to breathe, Bucky watched it move until the guy stepped into the room, right past where he was waiting. 

Taking the opportunity that had presented itself, Bucky didn’t shoot. He stepped in line right behind the man, pressing the barrel of Steve’s gun to the nape of his neck. Hoping the guy wouldn’t catch on to the fact that Bucky’s insides were threatening to rattle right out of him, he leaned in, growling under his breath. “Say a word and I pull the trigger. Got it?”

Much to his relief, the only answer he got was a slight nod. Bucky refused to let himself breathe out too loudly lest he give away his own tangled nerves. He steered Brock’s goon back towards the hallway, peeking around to make sure that it was empty of anyone who might ruin his plan. “Now, take me to where you’re holding Steve.”

Again, a slight nod, and then they were walking. Bucky wanted to feel vindictive or happy or right, anything but the awful churn of his stomach as he nudged the barrel of the handgun roughly against the back of the guy’s neck. It would be so easy to pull the trigger if he wanted to, just a slight crook of his fingers and Brock would be down a guy. It was also the last thing Bucky wanted, to be forced into yet another shape incongruent with his own agency on account of other people’s life choices. With every step he thanked his lucky stars the guy was thrown off enough to keep walking. 

While they covered what felt like miles, Bucky mulled over what he was going to say. Nothing seemed properly scathing for what Brock had pulled, and his father certainly wasn’t going to be there to glare at. In the end, Brock took that choice from Bucky too. They came to a stop in a room with a wide aisle, lined on either side with machines. There were stairs at the far end, but Bucky never got that far. His gaze settled on Brock standing over Steve, who had been shoved to his knees by a couple of Brock’s thugs. Bucky’s heart seized in his chest as he took it in, and suddenly the bargaining chip he had didn’t feel like nearly enough. 

Brock didn’t even have the decency to look surprised by Bucky having turned up. “Nice of you to join us.”

“Let him go,” Bucky demanded, using the man he’d followed into the room as a shield just in case. It had been supposed to come out like iron, but Bucky’s voice cracked on the last word. 

“Oh, give it up, kid.” Brock dragged his tongue over his top teeth, making a face at something. “You and I both know you’re not going to pull the trigger.”

“I _said_ -” Bucky cocked the hammer, his guts twisted at the prospect of even considering following through. The preemptive guilt vied for emotional real estate with the fear of what would happen if he didn’t. Bucky’s mind raced, grasping for purchase on something, _anything_ he could use to get them out of this. Maybe he didn’t need to get them out, though. All he needed was to stall. “Let him go.”

“Or what?” Brock asked, his lips twisted gleefully upward. He tilted his head to the side, mirroring the way Bucky peeked around his hostage. “Go ahead. What? Afraid to get a little blood on your hands?” 

From the corner of Bucky’s eye, he could see something moving. It was probably more of Brock’s team. He was running out of _time_. Somehow, when Natasha had told him he couldn’t have his moral high ground and get out of this alive, he was pretty sure she hadn’t meant murder. 

“Tell you what, kid. I’ll make a deal with you. If you’re faster than me-” Brock interrupted Bucky’s straying thoughts, jerking his attention back to the scene in front of him. Steve was still forced to the ground, and Brock was waving the gun at his head. “Maybe he doesn’t die.”

He ran through every version of events he could think of. The second he moved the gun to shoot Brock, the guy he was currently threatening would take him down. If he shot the guy first, he wouldn’t be fast enough to stop Brock. There was no way this ended in his favor, and they both knew it. The bastard was _toying_ with him. 

Bucky hadn’t taken a moment of the last couple of months lying down, and he wasn’t starting now. If he couldn’t win Brock’s game, Bucky resolved to play one he was better at. Steeling himself, he blurted out. “Don’t you want to know why I came after him?”

There was no sign that it was working. None, except for the fact that Brock hadn’t pulled the trigger yet. His eyebrow twitched just slightly, and Bucky could just about see him stuck on the question now that Bucky had posed it. Another second and he’d grasped the lure that Bucky set out. “He’s probably the only friend you’ve got right now.”

“Nah.” Bucky had lied his way through his whole life. It was self preservation, given the people who surrounded him. He let his shoulders rise and fall in a shrug he knew Brock would see. “I just wanted to see the look on your face when you figure out you’re too late.”

“You’re both here and neither one of you is walking back out, so how do you figure?” Brock’s hand had steadied, and from where Bucky stood, he could see the muzzle of Brock’s handgun pressed to Steve’s skull. Bucky wanted to scream, but he pulled himself together.

“The whole country is about to know what you did. The only question at this point is whether the cops tack on murder charges.” Bucky’s lip curled up as he leaned into the part he was playing. Brock didn’t know a thing about him and with any luck would never realize the difference between the facade and the real Bucky. “The way I see it, if you shoot us and run, the only story the cops are gonna get is my father’s. How, exactly, do you think that’s gonna go?”

Brock froze. Not the stillness of a composed killer, but the deer in the headlights sort of frozen as the gravity of what Bucky said sunk in. The muzzle of his handgun dropped slightly. “Well played, kid. Well fucking played, but I’m not letting you just walk out of here.”

“Of course not. I’m the only real leverage you have,” Bucky agreed, pretending his insides weren’t threatening to shake apart.

“ _Bucky_.” Steve struggled where he was pinned on his knees, and Bucky died a little bit inside not being able to tell him it was going to work out. He shook his head minutely, praying Steve would get the hint. 

“So, you’re going to give up? Just like that?” Brock eyed Bucky and Bucky held his breath. 

“No. You’re going to let Steve go, and _then_ I’m giving up.” Bucky tightened his hold on the man he was holding hostage. “Not before.” 

Brock stared Bucky down a moment longer, long enough that Bucky could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. Then, all at once, he holstered his gun and waved at the men holding Steve down. “Fine.”

Steve scrambled to his feet, shoulders immediately set, looking for a fight, and for a second, Bucky was terrified he was going to ruin the whole thing. Steve met Bucky’s eyes though, for confirmation maybe, but Bucky couldn’t give it to him. “You have to go.”

Steve gave him an anguished look, but something must have registered because he stood down. Bucky and Brock watched him dutifully trudge out of the room they were in. The moment he was out of sight, Brock cleared his throat. “Alright. You got what you wanted. Now hand over the gun.”

Hoping he wasn’t signing his own death certificate, Bucky tossed the gun over to Brock. Without a weapon to hold him at bay, Brock’s goon quickly overpowered Bucky, not that he was trying to fight back. The guy started to push him towards Brock, but they only got halfway there before Natasha’s plan fell into place. 

All at once, the room was flooded with what Bucky assumed was the backup Natasha had promised. They came in the form of police in tactical gear, surrounding Brock and his men from both sides of the room. Steve took advantage of the confusion to wrest himself free of Brock’s men. He ran towards Bucky and Bucky could only shout that Brock was aiming for his back. 

No shot ever came. Just when Bucky thought for sure that Brock was going to kill one or both of them, he seemed to come to the same conclusion Bucky had put in his head. With a clatter that seemed deafening even over the shouted instructions from the SWAT team, Brock dropped the handgun and put up his hands. 

\----------

The adrenaline rush petered off as Bucky sat on the concrete steps leading to the warehouse’s second floor and watched the police escort Brock and his team away. Steve leaned into him like Bucky was the most solid thing in the room. It was an unexpectedly welcome thing, and Bucky’s arm wound around Steve’s back almost of its own accord. 

“What happened to never doing me any favors?” Steve tilted his head in until his shaggy hair was brushing along the top of Bucky’s ear. 

“I said I never had, not that I never would,” Bucky pointed out. “This seemed like as good a place to start as any.”

Even before Steve replied, Bucky could feel the way he went rigid. “You could have died. Brock was going to kill you.”

“Here I thought this might be the part where you say ‘Thank you, Bucky, for not letting them splatter my brains all over a warehouse floor’. No? Okay then.” Bucky pulled away as he fired back to scowl at Steve. “I knew who I was dealing with.”

“You were out of all of this. All you had to do was wait and they never could have touched you.” Steve’s lips pressed in a thin line that Bucky had long since learned meant he was trying to hide how worried he was. 

“Yeah. I would have been fine and you’d have probably been dead.” Obstinately, Bucky grabbed for Steve’s hand where it rested in his lap. “Is it so hard to believe that I’d have a problem with that?”

“I knew what I was doing too, Bucky.” Steve sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. His thumb skated over the back of Bucky’s hand in slow circles. “It was an acceptable risk.”

“Not to me, it wasn’t!” Bucky snapped so sharply that Steve’s eyes went wide in surprise. Bucky’s temper was short lived though, and after a moment of stunned silence, he followed up much more quietly. “Look. We’re both alive and the right people are going to pay for what happened. Can we just… just leave it at that?”

When Steve didn’t immediately answer, Bucky braced himself for the possibility of another argument. It turned out to be unnecessary. Steve shook his head and leaned in to brush a chaste kiss against Bucky’s cheek bone. “Thank you.”

\----------

The entire time he was in the police station, Steve’s chest was squeezed in a vice grip of what was inevitably coming. Any minute now, they’d ask about the night at the hotel. He’d resigned himself to paying for what he’d done, but the waiting was nerve wracking all the same. Sooner or later, they’d ask the right question. 

Except they didn’t. There were plenty of questions about how he and Bucky had gotten away, but not a single one about how he’d gotten involved in the first place. They brought him coffee and nodded sympathetically, leaving Steve bewildered all the way through until they told him they were finished. 

In retrospect, it made sense. Brock couldn’t say anything about what Steve had done without incriminating himself. None of the evidence tied tangibly back to him and Bucky seemed entirely disinclined to share that part of the story. 

Steve walked out of the police station of his own accord, breathing more easily than he had in months. Bucky was waiting on the steps with his thumbs in his pockets. His casual silhouette was backlit by the fading grey of twilight, but Steve could still make out the lopsided little smile pulling at his mouth. 

“I hope you weren’t waiting long,” Steve said when he was far enough down the stairs not to have to yell. 

“ _Forever_. Five whole minutes or something. Be grateful I didn’t just leave without you.” Bucky relinquished his hold on one of his pockets in favor of taking Steve’s hand. “C’mon. I’m starving, and we can eat in a real, actual restaurant without worrying someone’s gonna see us, so we’re damned well going to make use of that.”

“Is that your way of asking me on a date?” Steve teased as their fingers laced together. Without the weight of their situation hanging over their heads, he was forced to acknowledge that maybe Bucky genuinely just wanted to be here. It was a pleasant realization, nestled warmly behind Steve’s breastbone.

“It’s my way of suggesting we celebrate not being stuck with Chinese food and pizza.” Bucky bumped companionably against Steve as they walked. “...Mostly.”

Steve turned his head to look at Bucky. The wind ruffled Bucky’s hair, and Steve noticed for maybe the first time, how much it had grown. Not that it was long, really, but it was a little unruly and Steve was struck with the urge to run his fingers through it. “Mostly?” 

“Yeah, yeah. Don’t press your luck.” Bucky grumbled, but his tone was warm. For a second Steve was happy to just have the freedom to be right here holding Bucky’s hand in the police station parking lot. 

Only, his freedom was ill-gotten, Steve was reasonably sure. None of the good he had done for Bucky negated the bad, but somehow Steve had come out of this unscathed anyway. Mostly. His conscience couldn’t sit comfortably with the idea that Bucky had been anything but honest in his behalf.

They made it all the way back to where the SUV was parked before Steve managed to shape what he wanted to ask into actual words. “Why did you lie for me?”

For a second, just a fleeting second Steve would have missed if he hadn’t been watching so closely, Bucky’s expression shuttered. It smoothed out into something friendlier, more open, and his nose crinkled comically as he buckled his seatbelt. “What makes you think I lied?”

“Well, I’m here aren’t I? If you had told them what happened, I’m pretty sure I’d be in handcuffs somewhere,” Steve pointed out. He didn’t look at Bucky as he started the car, mostly because he didn’t want Bucky to see his face, the calm veneer dangerously close to cracking. 

“Just goes to show what you know.” Bucky sighed through his nose in a way that Steve wasn’t sure how to parse. When he ventured as far as glancing over Bucky was smiling, sharper edged and wolfish. “I didn’t lie. I told them the truth exactly the way they needed to hear it.”

Spoken like a true politician, Steve supposed, as the gravity of who Bucky could have become settled in. If Bucky was kind and genuine - and he _was_ \- it was a choice he made, not a predisposition to shrugging off a dangerous skill set. Maybe that made who he was all the more significant. “You could run for office with reasoning like that.”

Bucky huffed out a half-hearted laugh. “Yeah, maybe.”

“ _Not_ that I’m saying you should,” Steve was quick to add. Probably the last thing Bucky wanted was any association with his father. “What you should do is whatever you want.”

Bucky hummed, a quiet, noncommittal sound as Steve pulled out of the parking space. “You know what I want?”

Steve swallowed, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Bucky probably wanted to go home, or at the very least, far from anything that smacked of their time together. “What do you want?”

“I want-” Bucky abruptly stopped. “Jesus. You look like I just canceled Christmas. What’s wrong?”

Had he been that obvious? Clearly he had because Bucky was sort of hovering, and it broke his heart. He couldn’t expect to be a part of wherever Bucky was headed. He didn’t want Bucky to worry either though, so he forced a lie off his lips. “Nothing. It’s just been a long day.”

For a second, Steve wasn’t sure he’d fooled anyone. Bucky’s mouth pursed in thought, and his eyes narrowed like he was searching for the slightest hint of dishonesty. By some miracle though, Bucky didn’t call him on it. “Long day is kind of an understatement.”

“I’ll say,” Steve agreed, leaning into the excuse. Before Bucky could say anything else about it, Steve made a point to shift the conversation. “So, what is it you want?”

Even though Steve was watching the road, waiting for the lane to clear so he could turn out onto it, he could feel Bucky squinting at him. Whatever suspicions Bucky harbored, all he said was, “Pancakes. Preferably with an exorbitant amount of syrup.”

“Pancakes?” Steve choked on the word, much to Bucky’s amusement. The nervous knot in stomach untangled itself, but Steve sort of wanted to hide his face so Bucky wouldn’t see the embarrassed flush across his cheeks. 

“Yes?” Out of the corner of his eye, Steve could still see Bucky watching him. He was terribly glad to be driving just then so that he had an excuse not to look back. “What did you think I was gonna say?”

There was no good answer to that, so Steve rather unconvincingly shrugged it off. “You know? I have no idea. Let’s go get pancakes.”

x

Too exhausted to think about what came next, they found there way to the little motel by the pancake house. They’d certainly been in enough cheap rooms, so what was one more? If Steve welcomed the promise of one more night curled up together under the covers, surely no one could blame him. 

It was as spartan as every other motel room they’d been in, the decor comically terrible. They were greeted by gaudy floral carpeting that barely concealed the concrete underneath. It contrasted with the very different floral bedspread that Steve was pretty sure was the same pattern as someone’s grandmother’s ugly couch. All of it was awash in hazy, orangey light that barely shown past the lamps on either side of the bed. 

“If you ever feel bad about your life choices, just remember that someone paid another human being to design this,” Bucky murmured. “I’m almost impressed.”

“The fact that the lighting is so bad is practically a gift.” Steve followed Bucky in, itching to reach out though his hands refused to cooperate. They’d danced around each other all night, keeping careful distance from whatever precipice they were in danger of falling off of. It would have been sweet, sort of, if Steve weren’t so painfully aware of time creeping away from them. 

 

“Oh, I don’t know. I kind of like the view.” Bucky was smirking at him, but it still took Steve a full thirty seconds to realize he was flirting. It was long enough for Bucky to tack on a little more. “Could… do without the weaponry though.”

“Just in case,” Steve insisted. There was no reason to worry, he knew, but Steve couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something still might go sideways on them, and he refused to meet it defenseless.

“No one is coming, Steve,” Bucky soothed, sweeping in closer and hooking an arm around Steve’s back. “Besides, it’s a rifle. What are you gonna do? Hide it under the pillow?”

“We thought no one was coming this morning too.” Steve stood firm, even though he knew he was probably just being obstinate at this point. He let Bucky ease the weapon out of his hand though and melted in closer. “I won’t let anything else happen. I can’t.”

“Jesus, Steve. We _won_. No one is coming for us, either one of us. If they haven’t picked my father up already, I imagine they will before he ever gets wind of what happened.” Bucky’s palms skated down Steve’s flanks, warm even through the fabric of his shirt. They were nearly nose to nose, so close Steve couldn’t quite see Bucky’s expression. “So lighten up before I have to smother you with a pillow.”

The threat was so ridiculous, Steve couldn’t help the little smile that pulled into shape across his lips. Bucky swayed in closer and Steve’s arms effortlessly wound around his back. “Bucky. They’re crappy hotel pillows. That’s like trying to smother someone with a piece of paper.”

“Right, so it’ll take considerable effort, and it’s really not how I want to spend my evening.” Though Steve couldn’t see Bucky’s face, the mirth in his voice was unmistakable. 

“Oh? You’ll have to enlighten me on how you want to spend your evening, then,” Steve teased. It was as far as he got before Bucky had caught his lips in a kiss. It was altogether different from any version of kisses from Bucky that Steve was familiar with, slow and searching as Bucky’s body bowed in his grip. 

Instinctively, Steve’s fingers curled in the back of Bucky’s shirt. When Bucky finally pulled back, Steve chased after him, an embarrassingly bereft sound escaping his throat. The gravely rasp of Bucky’s voice near his ear shuddered all the way down Steve’s spine. “Starting to get the picture?”

“I think I have an idea.” Steve cradled the nape of Bucky’s neck and then slide his hand up, his fingers curling in Bucky’s short hair. It dragged a shaky sigh from Bucky as Steve dipped his head for another kiss.

They teetered somewhere between the urgency that came with so much longing and the relief of being alive, and some deep seated need to drag out each moment to its farthest reach. Steve barely registered the way they shed their clothes along the way, but every inch of his skin where Bucky pressed against him felt electric. He had never once asked for absolution, but he found it in Bucky’s teeth dragging across his bottom lip, in the way they tumbled together into bed. 

Bucky landed with a soft, breathless gasp, and Steve, just barely, balanced enough not to crush him. For a second, Bucky gazed up with his wide, grey eyes framed with long, dark lashes, and Steve was lost. He could be happy here in this moment with Bucky, pale and pretty and sprawled across the completely hideous bedspread. There were no words for the revelation, just the bone deep realization that it would be so easy not to let go. Some sweet and sentimental thing pulsed behind Steve’s breastbone, though he could not give it a name. 

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Steve murmured reverently. He dipped his head, on a mission to keep Bucky from arguing, but it wasn’t quick enough to miss the brilliant red that spread like ink across Bucky’s cheeks. 

“What on earth are you… Ohh,” Bucky’s retort was choked off in a low moan as Steve found his mark. Steve’s teeth pressed over Bucky’s pulse and Bucky’s whole body arched upward. 

Bucky wound around him like a climbing vine, urging him closer. He ensnared Steve with the soft shape of his mouth and the warm press of his skin, a tender sort of purgatory while they lingered between what they’d been running from and where they went next. The universe narrowed to the curl of Bucky’s tongue in Steve’s mouth and all the soft, pliant places their fingers found purchase. 

The universe narrowed down to the two of them, driving away and hint of melancholy with grasping hands and murmured encouragements that crowded out everything else. Steve slipped down the slender expanse of Bucky’s frame, tracing the way with reverent presses of his lips and tongue to Bucky’s skin. It was a prayer of penitence in the shape of warm, open mouthed kisses while Bucky buried his hands in Steve’s hair and came apart little by little. 

Bucky’s thighs spread wider and Steve settled between them, down towards the foot of the bed. He was careful, thorough, but didn’t tease, learning the divots of Bucky’s hips under his tongue before moving on. This too was worshipful, a sacrifice of his lips around the head of Bucky’s cock, suckling briefly before sinking down. The impact was immediate as Bucky shuddered under Steve with each movement, his hips twitching beneath Steve’s palms. 

It was enough, just this, watching Bucky unravel. Steve fell into a slow, insistent rhythm and memorized the shuddery press of Bucky’s thighs against his arms and every wanton whimper that came with it. 

Bucky came apart with Steve’s throat clenching around the head of his cock, and Steve’s hands pinning him to the bed. The soft, uneven pants of his breathing became a litany of curses as Steve kept swallowing him down. Steve’s name was an invocation, a pleading thing as Bucky fell to pieces in Steve’s hands. 

Wrecked was a good look on Bucky. His short hair lay in a disheveled mess atop his head, and a pale pink flush had taken up what looked like long term residence on his cheeks. Just seeing Bucky quiet and vulnerable in the afterglow was a gift, even if that gift came with Bucky about two minutes away from dozing off and Steve’s cock hard and leaking on the terrible comforter. 

“C’mere,” Bucky urged about the time Steve was starting to think that was the end of it. The request was sleepy and sated sounding, but Bucky reached for Steve anyway. Bucky called and Steve went, as surely as if he’d been on strings. 

He crawled back up until they were nose to nose, something warm twisting in his chest at Bucky’s dopey, orgasm drunk smile. “I’m here.”

Bucky laughed, barely more than a quiet exhale as he curled one hand around the back of Steve’s head. “I noticed, but come _here_.”

There was a little pull from Bucky’s hand on his head, guiding their lips back together. Even lethargic in the afterglow, Bucky’s kisses were intoxicating, leaving every inch of Steve buzzing with electricity. If there was mercy for Steve Rogers, he found it in Bucky’s grasp, unspooling him one kiss at a time. 

It might have done him in, just Bucky’s tongue tangled with his, just the yearning slant of his body that kept them in contact. Steve’s breath hitched violently as Bucky’s nimble fingers curled around the base of cock and pulled. 

It couldn’t last like this. Already, something was building low in his belly. Steve kissed Bucky harder, and Bucky surrendered, welcoming everything Steve gave him. He stroked over and over, palm twisting over the head of Steve’s cock and back down again. The electric feeling was more and more until Steve was utterly alight with it, hips canting desperately, pushing his length insistently into Bucky’s waiting hand. 

Steve’s cry when he came was muffled against Bucky’s mouth, swallowed down in fierce, wanting kisses. Bucky rode out all of it with careful touches, until the high of falling over the edge had drifted into oversensitivity. Steve squirmed and Bucky withdrew, arms hooking around Steve’s back instead. The gesture was an endearing one, even if it promised to break Steve’s heart. 

For the space of a few shaky breaths, the two of them were silent, basking in the afterglow. Dimly, Steve was aware Bucky had to be kind of sticky. He meant to do something about it, but the minute he tried to get up, Bucky tugged him back. “Where are you going?”

“I thought you might want to get cleaned up,” Steve offered. His eyes flicked over Bucky’s frame, from the softly defined outline of his shoulders to the narrow jut of his hips. He so lovely Steve sort of fancied the idea that he could get drunk on it. 

A sly smile spread across Bucky’s mouth. “Why? I wasn’t done with you yet.”

“You want to go again?” Steve’s voice ticked upwards on the question, but his cock twitched back to life while Bucky rattled on. 

Bucky’s response was a noncommittal hum as he dragged Steve closer. “Now do you get the picture?”

Steve laughed before he could even try to stop himself, but maybe that was what Bucky had been hoping for. Bucky buried his face in the crook of Steve’s neck, nuzzling against him. Tilting his head, Steve kissed Bucky’s temple and then nudged closer to reach Bucky’s cheek and lips. “I dunno, Bucky. I think you might have to show me again.”

\----------

Bucky woke up pleasantly warm, cocooned with Steve in the hotel blankets. He reveled in the press of bare skin to bare skin where their limbs were tangled together. Breathing in, Bucky tucked his head against Steve’s chest, taking in the steady rise and fall of it. They could stay like this for all Bucky cared, sheltered away from police and reporters and everyone else who would want to drag out what they’d been through. 

Content and cozy, Bucky nearly dozed off again tucked against Steve. There was a sleepy hum overhead, and Steve’s fingers found their way to card through Bucky’s hair in sluggish, disjointed rhythm. They were lost like that, clinging to slumber as long as they could before the buzz of Steve’s phone on the nightstand nearly made them both jump right out of their skins. 

“Jesus,” Bucky grumbled, his heart still hammering in his chest as Steve reached for the phone. There was only one person with that number. He _knew_ that, but the paranoia that had kept him alive through this whole ordeal was hard to shake. “That better be something good.”

Steve glanced at the phone and set it aside. Bucky thought it meant he was going to curl back in under the covers and go back to sleep, but Steve was groping further along the table for the remote control. “She said turn on the tv.”

So much for going back to sleep. While the TV flickered to life, Bucky sat up, rearranging the sorry excuses for pillows along the headboard. Steve settled beside him and flipped through channels until what Natasha had clearly meant for them to see sprang to life. 

If Bucky hadn’t already recognized his father’s office, the news ticker told him everything he needed to know. The senator’s name scrolled across the screen, followed by a list of charges. In the background, Bucky could see him being escorted out in handcuffs. He wanted to be pleased or angry or something, but mostly, it just left him numb.

“So it’s over,” Steve murmured, long after the news had moved on to other tragedies. 

Over seemed like such a big word. It had only been a few months out of his life, but the existence Bucky had before the cabin felt lifetimes out of reach. He turned the idea over in his head, and leaned his temple against Steve’s shoulder. “Yeah. I guess it is.”

For a little while, they were quiet. Steve leaned in close, and if Bucky closed his eyes, he could pretend this was just a normal thing, just a life they opted to live because they felt like it. The illusion was fleeting, shattered by Steve asking, “Are you going to go home?”

“And deal with all the reporters who are gonna be knocking down my door? I don’t think so.” It was true, but it wasn’t the only truth. The idea of going back was simply untenable. Bucky didn’t know how he was meant to trust anything at all, and imagining being surrounded by familiar walls and hallways when he didn’t recognize anyone in his life anymore was… daunting. 

Steve thankfully took him at his word. “What do you want to do, then?”

“I’ve never had the luxury of thinking about that before,” Bucky admitted. It was easier to offer up that small, unimportant vulnerability than to admit he knew what Steve was really asking. Without even looking, he caught the hopeful edge of Steve’s question, but instead of answering, he turned it back. “What are you gonna do?”

They’d had this conversation so often, and always, Steve had hid behind some nebulous inevitable. No matter what Bucky had promised, Steve had never allowed for any possibility that included freedom. Only Bucky had untethered him in that respect, so for the first time, he had an answer. “I thought maybe I’d travel a little while, for fun this time, and… I don’t know. Maybe I’ll find some quiet place to settle down.”

“Not the cabin, though,” Bucky murmured, squirming a little next to Steve. The beginnings of an idea were caught in his chest, and he was working up the courage to let it loose. 

“ _No_.” Steve drew back enough to look at Bucky, positively scandalized. “If I never see that place again, it’ll be too soon.”

It was exactly the answer Bucky had hoped for. Cautiously, he reached for the hand Steve had rested between them, curling his own around it. “Maybe you could use some company?”

All at once, Steve lit up like the fourth of July. He cradled Bucky’s jaw in the palm of his free hand, brushing a tender kiss across Bucky’s lips. “You know? I think maybe I could.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of the political and ethical issues in this story are based on real life events. The asylum bill exists (H.R.391, if you're wondering, not to mention Jeff Sessions cherry picking cases to change how asylum laws are interpreted without new legislation). The Doctors Without Borders airstrike was based on a real incident in Kunduz, Afghanistan that killed 42 innocent people including 14 Doctors Without Borders staff. 
> 
> In light of the current political and social climate, I think it's worth bringing awareness to these real life goings on. If you're interested in learning how to help asylum seekers and immigrants, [ here is a list of organizations mobilizing to do just that. ](https://www.texastribune.org/2018/06/18/heres-list-organizations-are-mobilizing-help-separated-immigrant-child/)

**Author's Note:**

> You can find us as [Brooklyn-Bisexual](http://brooklyn-bisexual.tumblr.com/) and [DrowningByDegrees](http://drowningbydegrees-fanworks.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Someone To Watch Over Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17987291) by [obsessivereader](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivereader/pseuds/obsessivereader)




End file.
